BELLFLOWER, Ca. – The “official” start to the high school basketball season in Southern California is still some 2 ½ months away.
But many of the players that will be integral parts of the 2013-14 campaign converged in the St. John Bosco High gymnasium Sunday.
The Fullcourt Press Fall Showcase attracted some of the best players in the Southland, as is annually the case. Its college standouts- and current NBA players-dotted roster of alumni will attest.
Eight games, with players representing six high school classes (current seventh-graders thru seniors), were played over the course of about nine hours.
Things wrapped up with the “Top 25 seniors” contest, as the squad in black jerseys overpowering the team wearing white, 123-106.
Leading the way for the “Black” team was the No. 1 player from the western Class of 2014, Stanley Johnson of Santa Ana Mater Dei.
Johnson scored at least 30 points (I left the gym before collecting the final individual scoring totals – not that they really mattered, since there wasn’t a whole lot of defense played in the game).
But Johnson’s ability to score in pretty much any fashion he desired wasn’t a surprise – he’ll have a whole lot of 30-plus scoring performances in his final high school season.
Because of the lack of any real individual or team defense, and the offensive approach most of the players seemed to adopt – don’t shoot until the ball is in your hands within 20-feet of the iron – it was far from the best setting to really evaluate players’ college potential.
One fellow from the game whose college stock should really climb into the fall and winter (assuming he doesn’t sign a letter of intent in November) is Terrell Carter.
Carter – who looks all of about 6-foot-8 and a well-distributed 275 or so pounds – enrolled at Redondo High (in Redondo Beach) for his senior year after spending his first three years at West Torrance High.
With so few quality “posts” (centers or power forwards) – in the west and elsewhere – in the Class of 2014, anyone with his size, strength, shooting touch, dependable hands, solid footwork and surprising relative quickness is going to prove to be a much sought-after commodity.
He has shown remarkable improvement over the course of the spring and summer (he played in the Pump-N-Run program).
Other observations:
*The only junior (Class of 2015) to participate in the “Top 25 seniors game” was point guard Sedrick Barefield.
He and another point guard, Victor Joseph (Rancho Cucamonga), didn’t get caught up in the “I’m getting my shots up!” approach practiced by most of their teammates and did a fine job of getting the ball where it needed to go consistently.
*Barefield, fellow point guards Kendall Small (Lakewood Mayfair) and Kahlil Simplis (North Hollywood Campbell Hall), along with wings Jeffrey McClendon (a transfer from Pasadena now at Quartz Hill) and Stephen Thompson Jr. (Torrance Bishop Montgomery), and 6-8 Nnamdi Okongwu (Chino Hills) played as consistently well as any of the players in the Top 20 junior game.
That was the most focused, forceful and effective that I’ve seen Okongwu perform in the nearly three years I’ve followed him.
McClendon did his usual terrific defensive job, really locking into Santa Monica’s New Williams, especially, early.
*Three other juniors, minus the reputations of a lot of their classmates, who impressed Sunday included 6-3 Jeraun Richards (Downey), 6-2 Robert Lewis (Compton), 6-4 Kevin Dinges (La Crescenta Crescenta Valley) and 6-2 Akil Hall Reese (L.A. Westchester).
*A healthy percentage of the best of the Class of 2016 participated in the two “sophomore” games.
Foremost among those were guards Leland Green (Redondo Beach Redondo) and Jonah Mathews (Santa Monica), along with wings Jordan Griffin (Corona Centennial) and Chris Barnes (Torrance Bishop Montgomery) and post Michael Cage Jr. (Santa Ana Mater Dei).
Green dominated large stretches of the Top 20 game at both ends of the floor.
Several sophomores played in both games and each got better into the second game – 6-6 Max Flohr (Bellflower St. John Bosco), 6-5 Raysean Scott (Compton) and 6-5 Christian Gray (Riverside JW North).
*Six-one Ethan Thompson demonstrated that having “double the Thompson power” on the floor is going to be fortuitous for Bishop Montgomery this season.
He was far and away the best of the freshmen who participated Sunday, seemingly scoring about as easily as Stanley Johnson did about six hours later.
Two other freshmen who looked good, in particular, were 5-10 Ethan Moss (Encino Crespi) and 6-6 Daniel Scheier (Studio City Harvard-Westlake).
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