LAGUNA NIGUEL, Ca. – As far as “grassroots hoops”, it doesn’t come any better than what transpired on the evening of July 25, 2018 in a packed Bishop Gorman gymnasium in Las Vegas.
That’s when the powerhouses on the “shoe circuits”, Team Takeover (which had bagged the Nike/EYBL Peach Jam title a few weeks earlier the Compton Magic (which had pulled off the adidas summer title in New York) clashed in a powerhouse exhibition as part as the Fab 48 Tip-Off.
“Anyone who was anybody” (or so it appeared) – college coaches, current and future NBA players and “media/scouts” – was on hand, sitting hip-to-hip in the bleachers and the couple of dozen chairs surrounding the court for “celebrity types”.
The “alumni” of the game – pulled out in overtime by the Magic, 81-78 – have continued to make their impact beyond that night and the remainder of their, mostly, terrific high school careers.
One of the players that helped the Magic prevail, Onyeka Okongwu, went on to lead his Chino Hills High to a second consecutive California State title the following spring while earning a second California Player honor.
He went on to have an often-spectacular freshman, 2019-20 season at USC before becoming the No. 6 pick – by the Atlanta Hawks.
As for some of the others, well . . . you have a chance to watch seven of them in NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 action from Indianapolis this weekend.
*Magic Alumni Evan (pictured) and Isaiah Mobley (Rancho Christian) are key elements for the USC squad that faces Oregon in a West region semifinal Sunday evening, with Jaylen Clark (Corona Centennial) and Johnny Juzang (Harvard-Westlake) helping lead UCLA against Alabama in an East semifinal a little earlier Sunday.
And a guard on that squad, Jarod Lucas (Hacienda Heights Los Altos), has been in the lineup as No. 12 seed Oregon State has pulled off stunners against the 5 (Tennessee) and 4 seeds (Oklahoma State) in the Midwest region. The Beavers clash with Loyola-Chicago – which blasted the region’s top seed, Illinois, out of the event last Sunday – in a semifinal Saturday.
Repping that 2018 Team Takeover (based in the Washington, DC) team this weekend will be freshman center Hunter Dickinson (Hyattsville, MD, DeMatha) for the East’s top seed, Michigan, Saturday against Florida State.
And, starting for Villanova in its Sunday tilt with the South’s top seed, Baylor, will be a sophomore guard, Justin Moore, who was also a teammate of Dickinson’s at DeMatha.
Here’s the link to the BurlisonOnBasketball blog/story I wrote about the game, a few hours after it was completed.
I hope you enjoy reading my report on the game as I did watching and writing about it . . .
https://burlisononbasketball.com/2018/07/compton-magic-outlasts-team-takeover-in-ot-81-79/
Leave a Reply