Saturday hoops highlights from OLU and The MAP

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ORANGE and GARDEN GROVE, Ca. – It was a very long Memorial Weekend Saturday of high school basketball in the region of Southern California known as “Orange County”.

The collection of cities got that tag from the orange groves that were once so abundant in the area.

In fact, Anaheim used to be lined with them before this cartoonist/visionary named Walt Disney bought up large parcels of land in the city for which he planned to build something beyond an “amusement park” in the mid-1950s.

The rest is a history lesson that I’m sure most of you are familiar with.

But I digress . . .

The only obvious “orange” (a least a hue of sort) found in Orange Lutheran High’s two gymnasiums and on eight of the basketball floors in Garden Grove’s “MAP” multi-sport facilities were the basketballs used for the Compton Magic/adidas Memorial Tournament and the Under Armour Association in the MAP.

My 13-plus hours of viewing began at Orange Lutheran at 8 a.m. and ended about seven hours as I left to begin the 15-mile or so southeastern drive to (via the Newport/55 south-bound and Garden Grove/22 east-bound freeways) the MAP for the UAA event.

I saw all of a handful and hunks of others totaling 21 games at Orange Lutheran (or as we residents of  “The County” more readily refer to it as “OLU”), via the four courts used in its two gyms.

The most notable of those being the contest between Team Lillard (named for adidas endorsee and Portland Trail Blazers’ guard Damian Lillard, an alum of the program), formerly known as “the Oakland Rebels) and the Big Ballerz, made up mostly of players from the Southern California-based Chino Hills team that was 35-0 and No. 1 in all of the major national Top 25 rankings last season.

Now, national Player of the Year Lonzo Ball is just a few weeks away from starting summer school at UCLA and dominant 6-foot-9 center Onyeka Okongwu is playing for the Compton Magic 17s program this spring and summer.

But the Big Ballerz/Chino Hills programs are still the homes to some very gifted players.

And they need significant contributions from each of them Saturday afternoon to help turn a 21-point deficit midway through the second half to a 102-99 overtime victory over Team Lillard.

Class of 2017 standouts from Oakland Tech, 6-3 Souley Boum and 6-7 Cameron Reese, as well as 6-3 senior-to-be Tre Gray (El Cerrito in Richmond), helped Team Lillard pull out to its seemingly commanding advantage.

But the relentless crashing of the backboards of 2017 wings LiAngelo Ball and Elizjah Scott and two other members of the extended Ball family helped the comeback and eventually contributed to pulling it out in OT.

Six-seven junior-to-be Andre Ball gave the team its first lead (at 93-92) with a 3-pointer.

And then 14-year-old LaMelo Ball scored the squad’s final nine points – two of those on free throws to send the game into OT and then all seven of his team’s points in OT – to salt it away.

Gelo and Melo are the brothers of Lonzo; Dre is the sibblings’ first cousin.

Other observations of note from my OLU-stay:

*David Singleton (Torrance Bishop Montgomery) is the best scorer in the California Class of 2018; he scored 30-plus points in each of Belmont Shore’s two wins;

*A strong Dream Vision squad got even stronger with the addition of 2017 prospects Christian Popoola Jr. (Las Vegas Bishop Gorman) and 6-6 Donnie Tillman (Henderson, NV, Findlay Prep).

It already was home to two of the better frontcourt players in SoCal’s Class of 2017: 6-7 Evan Battey (Villa Park) and 6-6 Sebastian Much (San Juan Capistrano JSerra), each of which was quite impressive in the win over Pump-N-Run I watched;

*Dante Exum Elite/Utah Prospects got strong efforts from its two 6-10 2017 posts in Hunter Thompson (Pine Bluff in Wyoming) and Branden Carlson (Orem, UT, Bingham);

*The exquisite jump shooting-stroke of 6-3 senior-to-be Braxton Bertolette (Fort Collins Fossil Ridge) was on display again during the Colorado Hawks’ win over Los Angeles-based Pro Skills Academy.

I’ll go into more detail into what I’ve seen at the MAP in a report I’ll put on the website later Sunday night.

But the most compelling game I watched there Saturday also drew the biggest crowd.

And Southern California-based Earl Watson Elite overcame a two-point deficit at intermission to topple Delaware-based We R1 – and it’s heavily touted 2017 point guard, Trevon Duval – 77-66 behind the jump shooting of Jemarl Baker (Eastvale Roosevelt).

Baker scored a game-high 34 points, 18 of those coming from his six of nine shooting from behind the 3-point line.

Duval (Advanced Prep International in Dallas) scored 20 points and had seven points but was defended pretty well by Juhwan Harris-Dyson (Heritage Christian in the San Fernando Valley city of Northridge), who helped force Duval into five turnovers while scoring 11 points of his own.

Ira Lee (Prolific Prep in the NorCal city of Napa) had 12 points and nine rebounds for EWE while 2018 point guard Spencer Freedman (Santa Ana Mater Dei) had 10 points down the stretch via two 3s and four free throws.

I’ll be at the MAP all Sunday and then venture back to OLU on Memorial Day for the final action of the Compton Magic event.