Mater Dei Tourney three times as good

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SANTA ANA, CA – What’s better than having the opportunity to sit down and watch a terrific summer high school hoops game?

Why, it’s having the chance to sit down and watch that game. . . . then take a few steps and check out another . . . and un-park the behind once more and watch a third.

Seventy-five minutes later, repeat the process.

That was the scenario at Mater Dei High over the weekend during the Monarchs’ annual second-weekend-in-June tournament in their three full-courts facility.

Seventy-eight games were played from Friday afternoon until Sunday evening, with the likes of Long Beach Poly, L.A. Fairfax, Corona Centennial, Bellflower St. John Bosco, Orange Lutheran and Woodland Hills El Camino Real, which captured the L.A. City’s Div. II title.

Gary McKnight’s Monarchs lost three critical pieces to their Southern Section I-AA and State Division I championship squad last March in Katin Reinhardt (UNLV) and Xavier Johnson and Eli Stalzer (both Colorado).

There’s more than enough back in Mater Dei uniforms to help McKnight add to his Southern Section and State hardware next spring, most notably in seniors-to-be Jordan Strawberry (a point guard) and Elijah Brown (Lakers’ coach Mike Brown’s son and a 6-foot-4 wing), as well as Stanley Johnson, who will be one of the state’s best juniors season.

All three played well over the weekend, as did two more members of the Class of 2013 (guard James McGee and post Mike Tisdale), another junior to-be (Mario Soto) as well as rising sophomore Troy Kramer, who has the potential to surprise a lot of folks next season.

There were a lot of key players missing, who were either hurt or participating in university or shoe company-sponsored camps, and – in one case – the Chris Paul Point Guard Camp in North Carolina (which is where Crespi’s London Perrantes was).

Among those who were out of town: Roschon Prince and Kameron Chatman (Poly); Isaac and Daniel Hamilton (St. John Bosco); Julian Richardson (El Camino Real) and Nick Colletta (Glendora)

Here are some of the non-Mater Dei players who also impressed:

• Jose Estrada, a 6-foot-3 combo guard for Montebello Cantwell who was one of the Southland’s top scorers as a junior;
• Sophomores-to-be Tyler Burch (Huntington Beach Ocean View); Eric Patton (Santa Ana Foothill); Rex Pflueger (San Juan Capistrano JSerra); Nick Anderson (Anaheim Canyon); Sedrick Barefield (Corona Centennial) and K.J. Smith (Westlake Oaks Christian).
• Some of the more notable Class of 2013 members who displayed their skills included Jordan Bell (Poly), Payton Banks (Orange Lutheran), Reggie Theus Jr. (Fairfax) and Michael Thomas (El Camino Real).
•   Look for Los Alamitos and El Toro to have a couple of the most underrated (at least for the time being) juniors-to-be in the Southland. That would be 6-4 Khalid Washington, who hit five 3s in a win over Mission Viejo Capistrano Valley for Los Alamitos on Friday, and 6-3 point guard George Buaku of Lake Forest El Toro.