ORANGE, Ca. – Fall League basketball, of the high school variety, was in full bloom Sunday at Orange Lutheran High.
“The LEAGUE” – hosted by Orange Lutheran and Westminster high schools, coordinated by the Compton Magic organization, sponsored by adidas and, yes, worthy of its all-caps spelling – made its 2016 debut Sunday.
And those in attendance got up-close looks at some of Southern California’s better teams – and players – for the 2016-17 “regular” season that doesn’t debut until Thanksgiving Week.
Highlighting the action at Orange Lutheran was a couple of games involving four teams that almost assuredly can be penciled in a California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Southern Division Open Division playoff squads come mid-February.
In the first of those, Studio City Harvard-Westlake edged Corona Centennial, 41-38.
Sophomore Cassius Stanley – who helped lead the Wolverines to a State Division IV championship last spring in Sacramento – put his team up to stay with a 3-point with 58 seconds to go.
Stanley, who is transitioning into more of a “playmaking” role with the program, also got a lot of help from two freshmen in 6-6 Johnny Juzang (an exceptional jump shooter, to say the least) and 6-8 Mason Hooks (who did a nice job while often matched against the Huskies’ UCLA-bound 6-9 Jalen Hill).
Centennial lost Jordan Griffin (Long Beach State) and Ike Anigbogu (ULCA) to graduation in June. But Coach Josh Giles should still field one of the 10 or so best squads in Southern California, due to the presence of Hill and fellow seniors in guards Paul Vilela, Isom Butler and Gio Nelson.
And, in the second of those down-to-the-wire tilts, Long Beach Poly edged Chino Hills after playing a two-minute overtime, 66-63.
National Player of the Year Lonzo Ball is now a UCLA freshman after leading the Huskies to a 35-0 record and State Open Division title last spring.
But there are still three members of his family – brothers Gelo and Melo Ball and first-cousin Andre Ball – in the starting lineup, along with two other returnees in Loyola Marymount-bound Elizjah Scott and sophomore center Onyeka Okongwu.
The Huskies out-sprinted a talented Lynwood squad earlier in the day, 90-65.
But the Jackrabbits, with a frontcourt going 6-9 (John Duff), 6-5 (LMU-bound Zafir Williams) and 6-8 (Myles Johnson), did a nice job of passing through Chino Hills’ full-court pressure and probing its half-court defense for layups or wide-open jumpers.
On the other end the Jackrabbits kept the Huskies from getting a lot of leak-out layups and jump shots and kept them from getting the second- and third-shot attempts they got earlier in the day.
Poly was up by 12 points with a bit more than three minutes to go before Chino Hills – getting a couple of deep, deep 3s by Gelo Ball – got itself in position to finally tie the score.
And Melo Ball, who turned 15 years old a little more than a month about and – at 6-1ish – is probably four inches taller than he was when the Huskies wrapped up the 35-0 run last spring, hit two free throws with six seconds to go to earn the OT.
But Williams scored six points in those two minutes and the Jackrabbits withstood a couple of deep 3s by the Ball Brothers to hold on.
Hacienda Heights Los Altos, coached by Jeff Lucas and led by his sophomore son, Jarod Lucas, scored impressive wins over Orange Lutheran and Temecula Rancho Christian.
Also picking up two wins each were El Cajon Foothills Christian (led by UCLA-bound guard Jaylen Hands) and L.A. Windward.
Hands, a strong candidate to follow Lonzo Ball as the State Player of the Year in March, did pretty much whatever he wanted with the ball in his hands against Orange Lutheran and Rancho Christian.
Windward, under first-year coach Colin Pfaff (a former assistant at the University of Portland), knocked off San Bernardino and another squad (whose identity, I’m ashamed to say, I forgot to verify; you couldn’t tell it by the jerseys the team was wearing).
Windward lost Shareef O’Neal (to Crossroads) and Payton Moore (to Santa Monica) via transfers but still has three very good players in seniors Jordan Sacks and Jalen Harris and junior Jules Bernard, each of which played quite well Sunday.
Leave a Reply