Burlison on Basketball

Frank Burlison | High School Basketball | College Basketball

Florida players making big impact on “West” NCAA Academy location

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PHOENIX – From what I gather, players weren’t assigned to the four regional sites of the first-ever NCAA College Basketball Academy strictly based upon where they live.

A major factor, apparently, was in how readily a player could be transported to one of the sites – especially relative to air fare and if direct flights could be arranged for the athlete.

The necessity of athletes having to make one or more connections to flights was to be avoided (to lessen the odds of a player missing one of those changes and the relative chaos as a result).

There are (by my unofficial tabulation) 30 players who have Florida listed as their home state among the 161 I counted on the roster Wednesday night for the West Region at Grand Canyon University.

I’m going to go way out on the proverbial limb with this one but I’m guessing that the NCAA’s travel agency had a much easier time booking flights from any number of Florida airports to Phoenix than it did to the airports feeding the East (The University of Connecticut in Storrs), Midwest (Champaign, home to the University of Illinois) and South (University of Houston.

And that’s a long-winded preface into my opinion that a Floridian — Michael James, a 6-foot-6, junior-to-be at Oak Ridge High in Orlando – is the player who has most impressed me over the first two days of games in Session I of the West Region competition.

James, a recent transfer from Wekiva High in Apopka (which is 20 miles or so northwest of Orlando), has shown off a deep reservoir of athletic and basketball skills during four games for the “1984 Georgetown” camp squad Tuesday and Wednesday.

According to Florida-based Rivals.com recruiting analyst Russ Wood, James has been offered scholarships by coaches from three in-state programs (UCF, USF and Florida Gulf Coast) as well as ACC member Wake Forest.

Look for the bulk of the Southeastern Conference coaching staffs, as well as their ACC counterparts, to plant feet firmly and enthusiastically  on what will be a rapidly expanding James Bandwagon once those guys get to watch him in action as much as I – and a whole lot coaches from a lot of states not named Florida – have this week.

Other Florida players who been among the best of the best I’ve seen since Tuesday afternoon include another Class of 2021 member Alex Fudge, who is a slender and fluid 6-7 with a lot of handling skill and attends Robert E. Lee (have they got the message down there yet?) in Jacksonville, as well as 6-9, senior-to-be Yussif Basa-Ama (St. Andrews in Boca Raton).

Among the real western players, seniors-to-be Luke Haupt (Saint Augustine) and Brandon Angel (Torrey Pines), as well as Angel’s Class of 2021 teammate Chris Howell, continued to San Diego quite proud with their efforts.

Action in Session I concludes Thursday morning.

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