NORWALK – The 17th Pangos All-American Camp tipped off Friday night at Cerritos College with its annual gathering of future McDonald’s All-Americans and NBA first-round selections.
And, for the second year in a row, NBA scouts – the ones actually employed by the NBA, that is – were also in attendance.
With so many quality players to see and three games going on at the same time, one can get a bit of sensory overload if you spend as much time turning around to watch the game going on behind as you do watching the game in front of you.
That can often create a distorted perspective of how well a kid might really have played for the entirety of a game.
Doing the “split vision” thing often leads to seeing the good plays a guy makes while missing the bad ones – or vice versa.
So, there’s my “scouting/evaluation” philosophy for an event of this kind in a nutshell.
The two games I watched pitted North Carolina and Louisville in the “ACC division” (it has nothing to do with the regions that the kids come from, FYI) followed by Arizona and UCLA in the “Pac 12 division”.
To keep this from getting too long-winded – and to save the more extensive, in-depth analysis for the college coaching staffs and NBA franchises that actually pay me for my opinions – I’ll limit the names of kids I thought played especially well to just nine.
Now, there were some very good – and highly touted – players on hand who I know are capable of playing a lot better than they did when I watched Friday night . . . especially when it comes to shot selection, defense and overall effort.
ESPN’s Fran Fraschilla – a former college head coach who is one of the two or three “media types” who are most plugged in to what NBA general managers, personnel directors and scouts are thinking – addressed the group of 110 or so players Friday night before games began.
The key thing he said – without question – was (with so many NBA employees watching) to treat the camp as if it would be the “the first line in your (possible) NBA resume”, relative to the aforementioned shot selection, defense, effort and general attitude.
I’ll say that, based upon the way they played, there were numerous guys who weren’t listening to Coach Fraschilla andleave it at that without getting too righteously indignant with you all.
So, to the guys that most impressed me Friday night . . .
North Carolina (which rolled Louisville, 92-72):
*Evan Mobley (Rancho Christian; is the consensus No. 1 player in the Class of 2020 and mostly looked the part);
*Daishen Nix (Trinity International in Las Vegas; considered the top Class of 2020 point guard in the west and he did a nice job of showing why);
*Moses Moody (Montverde Academy in Florida but from Arkansas; scored frequently, spectacularly and efficiently – a rare 1-2-3 punch at a camp of this sort);
Louisville:
*Terren Frank (Sierra Canyon; showed why he has been a key element in his team’s two consecutive State Open Division championship runs)
Arizona (which pounded UCLA, 97-73):
*Scottie Barnes (University School in Florida; did everything exceptionally – especially pass – except jump shoot. And he only took three of them, thank goodness);
*Aminu Mohammed (PICTURED; Greenwood in Springfield, MO; he scored 33 points in the same fashion that Moody scored 24 only even more spectacularly and efficiently with just 15 shots; A contender right out of the box for “Best 2021 player in the Camp);
*Jaylen Clark (Corona Centennial but soon to be Etiwanda; the Compton Magic standout had a quality Memorial Weekend at the Magic Event at Orange Lutheran; it was much the same Friday night);
*Isa Silva (Jesuit near Sacramento; another Compton Magic player; elite passer and he may be the best 2021 point guard here);
UCLA:
*Paolo Banchero (Seattle O’Dea; he’s two years from high school graduation but Mobley could prove to be the only better “big man” here).
Leave a Reply