SCOTTSDALE, AZ – Rancho Solano Prep played host on Saturday’s first day of the most recent stop on the West Coast Elite Fall Circuit, this one highlighted by a lot of the very best that Arizona has to offer on the elementary, middle school and high school boys’ basketball scene.
Athletes from the first two categories were in the spotlight on Saturday, with things wrapping up with the Top 20 All-Star Game.
And 5-foot-7 left hander Dominique Newsom (an eighth-grader who attends StarShine Academy, a K-to-12 charter school in Phoenix) used that stage to continue the sizzling shooting that he had displayed in the two camp plays he was a part of in the morning and early afternoon.
Newsom, according to numbers tracked by Gregg Rosenberg (who already cool dude who tracks the Arizona hoops scene – and beyond – for the Rivals’ Arizonavarsity.com site), hit five 3s in each of those first two games.
And the jumpers were just as on-target while playing with and against the best among the 105 or so who participated Saturday.
Newsom hit six 3s – giving him, unofficially, 16 on the day – while scoring 24 points in his team’s 88-67 victory.
Sharing camp Most Outstanding Player honors (as selected by Rosenberg and WCE staff members) was the tallest player among the campers, 6-6 Carter Van Hammond (from the Class of 2021, he attends Legacy Traditional Academy in Chandler).
A couple of other “big men” (albeit some four or so inches shorter than Van Hammond) whose play in the first two games earned them their “golden tickets” to the Top 20 clash were Raul Montoya (Verrado Middle School in Buckeye) and DaRon Holmes II (Western Sky MS in Goodyear).
He’s not quite yet a 6-footer, but Tyrone Washington Jr. (Fees MS in Tempe) also displayed plenty of promise in the frontcourt, as well.
Joining Newsom as some the backcourt players who also played pretty well throughout the day and in the Top 20 affair were Riley Fornerette (Marley Park Elementary – it’s K-to-8 – in Sunrise); Ricardo Sarmiento (Arizona State University Preparatory Academy in Phoenix); Derick Kaps (Stapley Junior High in Mesa); Richard Isaacs (Becker Middle School in Las Vegas); Brett Hardt, Jr. (who attends Rancho Solano); Jahon Lethridge (Thunderbird in and Wyatt Bell (a classmate of Montoya’s at Verrado MS).
Two seventh graders and a sixth grader who impressed me in camp games and in the Top 40 games were 5-8 Brandon Lee (Arizona College Prep in Chandler) and 5-9 Isaac Hymes (Western Sky MS), as well as 6-foot Ky Green (Parkridge Elementary in Peoria).
The older – and, of course, bigger – boys will be in action on Day II Sunday, with camp games tipping off at 9 a.m.
Among the noteworthy players committed to playing Sunday are current seniors Marcus Shaver (6-1/Phoenix Shadow Mountain) and Matthew Kempton (6-5/Phoenix Brophy Prep); juniors K.J. Hymes (6-9/Phoenix St. Mary’s) and Tevian Jones (6-6/Chandler); sophomores Majok Deng (6-5/Tucson Salpointe) and Josh Green (6-4/Phoenix Hillcrest Prep); and freshmen Nico Mannion (6-0/Scottsdale Pinnacle) and Austin Cook (6-5/Damien in La Verne in Southern California).
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