New Jersey gathering point for some of East’s best

• Tweet

• Tweet

THOROFARE, N.J. – The first day of the sixth annual Pangos All-East Frosh/Soph provided the distinct impression that things will be pretty much status quo for the event:

There are a whole lot of talented young basketball players on hand, showing off their skills in the RiverWinds Community Center.

Approximately 120 players showed up and plenty of them impressed Saturday, with the 12 camp teams playing a game each in the afternoon and evening.

Action continues Sunday morning at 9 o’clock, as each team will again play twice.

The Cream of the Crop Top 40 Game is set to tip off at 1:15 in the afternoon, with the Top 20 affair to follow about an hour later.

Where to start? There were standouts at the point guard, wing (shooting guard and small forward) and post (center and power forward) positions Saturday.

Among the point guard-types who caught my eye were:

*Sophomores Alani Moore (5-foot-9/Hyattsville, MD, DeMatha), 5-10 Bryce Aiken (Elizabeth, NJ, Patrick School) and 5-10 Jamal Wright (Potomac, MD, Bullis).

Moore played well enough in his first game but was nothing short of terrific in his second outing, getting the ball where it needed to go, via his dribbling or always heads-up passing. He also scored on deep jumpers, floaters and pull-ups.

Aiken is quite slender (I’m guessing, perhaps, 140 pounds-max) and looks, facially, a lot closer to being a fifth grader than 10^th grader.

However, there is nothing elementary (pun intended) at all about Aiken’s ball-handling, passing and on-court demeanor.

He delivers his passes with the poise of a college senior and is as a calm as a PhD candidate in mathematics who has just been asked to take a pop quiz in introductory algebra.

If there is a faster player (on the dribble) in the camp than Wright, then he must have played while I ventured to the restroom or when I was staring at the floor or at the ceiling.

That is an inept attempt at humor when I could have just as easily have wrote “there isn’t a faster dribbler in the camp than Wright”.

*And then there is the Philadelphia Newman-Goretti freshman-sophomore combo of 6-foot Quade Greene and 5-11 Vaughn Covington Jr. (who play for different teams here).

Greene penetrated to score and distribute with equal aplomb (by the way, I love that word), and hit enough jumpers off the catch to make defenders realize they have to guard him to the arc.

Covington, who was at this camp last year, isn’t quite as physically strong as his prep teammate but is oh-so-smooth on the dribble, with as good of crossover and hesitation dribbles as were on display Saturday.

*There were at least four scintillating (another word I’m enamored with right now) freshmen wings in camps.

At least they “scintillated” when I happened to be watching them in each of their games . . .

Six-five Timmel “Melo” Eggleston attends St. Francis in Baltimore (gee . . . how many Baltimore lads are tagged with the “Melo” nickname these days, anyway?).

One of his senior teammates, UNLV-bound Dwayne Morgan, loaned Eggleston some gear to take to New Jersey with him for this weekend’s competition:

The Pangos socks he picked up while playing at the Pangos All-American Camp in Long Beach, CA, in June, as well as the Under Armour shoes he wore at the NBA Players Association Camp in Charlottesville, VA, in July.

I’ve got a hunch, though, that Eggleston would have been balling out no matter what kind of socks and kicks he was wearing on Saturday.

Eggleston buried his first shot Saturday – a 3 pointer off the catch from out top – and converted his second, an “and one!’ drive, in traffic.

He didn’t slow down a bit the rest of the day, and hit something approaching eight jumpers in his second contest.

But his most eye-catching play might have been the block of the 3-point try by another player you’re about to read about . . .

That aforementioned player, 6-5 David Caraher, scored with nearly the ease Saturday as did the fellow who swatted his jumper.

Caraher came all the way from North Carolina (he attends Chapel Hill High) and brought his nifty jump shot and bouncy legs with him.

He nailed plenty of those jumpers and used those springy wheels to convert in traffic via penetration feeds, or after grabbing rebounds and dropping the ball through the ring before defenders could contest the shots.

He’ll be a notable presence on Atlantic Coast Conference recruiting radar shortly, I would imagine – especially on Tobacco Road.

Another of those fan-frosh-tic scorers is 6-3 Shaheed Haynes (Philadelphia Imhotep).

The school produced one of the better players in the East last season (Providence freshman Brandon Austin) and it will be able to claim to another of the “better players in the East” shortly via Haynes. He scored with equal efficiency by way of his deep jumpers and his forceful drives. He’s a heck of a passer, as well.

Another scorer-deluxe freshman is 6-7 Jordan Tucker (White Plains, NY, High), who seemed to be able to move from post to wing quite comfortably, thank you very much!

And, for another wing who is as tall as most of the post players in the camp and is just as comfortable with the ball in his hands on the perimeter as any point guard in camp, 6-7 and 205-pound (give or take) Lamar Stevens (Haverford, PA, High) is deceptively quick in a Kyle Anderson-kind of fashion.

He isn’t the passer (or handler) the UCLA sophomore is but he’s a better jump shooter, for sure.

*And, for a “post sampler” of Saturday’s action, I offer you sophomores 6-10 Nysier Brooks (Radnor, PA, Archbishop Carroll), 6-10 ½ Sedee Keita (Saxton River, VT, Vermont Academy) and 6-8 Khalif Kroma (Philadelphia Roman Catholic), as well as 6-7 freshman Sidney Wilson (New York City St. Raymond’s).