ST. GEORGE, Utah – A couple of soon-to-be-high-profile high school players – from near-opposite ends of the country – shared the 10th annual Pangos Junior High/Middle School All-American Camp Most Outstanding Player honors Sunday afternoon.
Six-foot-three Alexander Lloyd (from Hollywood in Florida), who led the winning White squad to a 76-65 victory in the “Best of the Best” all-star camp that wrapped up the two-day event, and 6-6 Koa Peat (Chandler in Arizona) were each terrific over the course of the event that it was too difficult to separate one from the other when it came to awarding top honors.
And Lloyd punctuated his two-day effort with 14 points (four of those coming via a couple of spectacular dunks), five rebounds and three steals for the team in white jerseys.
He also did a nifty job while often matched up defensively against the multi-skilled Peat, who may be the early front-runner in the race for the eventual crown as the west’s “Best of 2025” some eight months before his first high school game.
Lloyd was the easy choice as the Most Outstanding Player for the winning squad in the final all-star game, while 6-4 Shamar Jones (Tracy in California), by way of his 15-point and eight-rebound effort, bagged MOP for the losing squad.
Peat had 10 points and five rebounds for the blue squad while superb point guard Gavin Hightower (Los Angeles) had six points, five rebounds and two assists.
Hightower was likely the leading scorer during the camp’s “league games” during his three contests with “UCLA”.
Four seventh graders joined the 26 eighth graders in the Best of the Best contest.
Three of those were point guards in Timothy Anderson (Las Vegas), Jason Crowe Jr. (Los Angeles) and Isaiah Rogers (Corona in California), and the fourth was the dynamic athlete Justice Griffith.
Griffith, also from Carson, is only listed at 5-10 but played about seven inches taller – and so much more assertively – than anyone else in the three camp games that involved seventh and sixth graders.
Guard Jevon Yapi (Las Vegas) scored 23 points in the first all-star game involving only eighth graders.
My choices as the camp’s Top 20 in the class of 2025
J.J. Apathjang 6-2 Salt Lake City (Real SL Academy)
Tariq Bridges 6-2 Los Angeles (Time4Learning/Compass School)
Isaiah Cunningham 6-2 Tacoma, WA (Cedar Crest)
Hudson Floyd 5-8 Spokane, WA (Chase MS)
Kellen Hampton 6-4 Oakland (St. Leo)
D’Andre Harrison 6-3 Gilbert, AZ (Gilbert MS)
Gavin Hightower 6-1 Northridge, CA (Heritage Christian)
Eliyahs Hood 6-3 Spring, TX (Legacy Sports Science)
Drezdon Jensen 6-2 Centerville, UT (Centerville MS)
Shamar Jones 6-4 Tracy, CA (Home School)
Alexander Lloyd 6-3 Hollywood, FL (Nativity Catholic)
Hudson Mayes 5-11 Los Angeles
Amarion Orange 6-0 Moreno Valley, CA (Vista Heights MS)
Koa Peat 6-6 Chandler, AZ (Aprende MS)
Kingston Porch 6-1 Chandler, AZ (Champion Schools)
McKel Shedrick 6-1 Rancho Cucamonga, CA (Ruth Musser)
John Southwick 6-2 Richfield, UT (Richfield)
Isaac Staley 6-4 Highland, UT (Lone Peak)
Avian Webb 5-11 Atchison, KS (Atchison MS)
Jevon Yapi 5-10 Las Vegas (Mannion MS)
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