LAS VEGAS – Night No. 1 of the 20th Pangos All-American Basketball Camp provided plenty of Sunday storylines at Bishop Gorman High.
With nearly every NBA franchise represented by scouts or front-office personnel to check out 100-plus high school-aged players from across the basketball playing word, it’s only appropriate that the offspring of former NBA athletes were among those being evaluated.
*Six-foot-nine Carey Booth (Englewood, CO, Cherry Creek; the son of former NBA forward and current Denver Nuggets General Manager Calvin Booth); 6-5 Dylan Harper (Ramsey, NJ, Bosco Tech; pops, Ron Harper, has five NBA championship rings in his hardware collection) and 6-7 Andrej Stojakovic (Carmichael, CA, Jesuit; dad Peja averaged 17.0 ppg in 13 NBA seasons, the first eight of those with the Sacramento Kings) each had strong moments Sunday night in the first round of game action.
Harper (who plays for “Stanford”, in the 12-team, “Pac-12 and ACC” setup here) is damn-near ambidextrous on his drives and finishes, and has plenty of range on his left-handed jumpers.
He’ll leave here with his standing among Class of 2024 prospects having moved up several rungs.
*Harper’s camp teammates include three other juniors-to-be who were very good in the game with “Colorado”: 6-6 Ian Jackson (Bronx Cardinal Hayes), 6-1 Dedan Thomas Jr. (Las Vegas Liberty) and 6-8 Amier Ali (Montverde, FL, Academy).
The left-handed Thomas – who helped lead his high school team to its first state title in March – was as dynamic in the open floor as were any among a bunch of quality point guard-prospects I watched during the two games I locked into.
Jackson came into the camp as my unofficial “No. 1” prospect in the c/o of 2024 and everything he did against Colorado kept me of that opinion.
*Another consensus Top 5-10ish prospect in the c/o 2024, 6-5 Isaiah Elohim (Chatsworth, CA, Sierra Canyon), did plenty Sunday night for “Notre Dame” to justify his status as the top California player in his class since he was an eighth-grader at Heritage Christian in Northridge.
A combination of power and skill enabled Elohim (pictured) to pretty much get to any spot he needed to go, on the dribble, from 18-feet and in, to create an ideal scoring opportunity for himself.
*That “Notre Dame vs. Duke”, “ACC clash”, was highlighted by the top individual matchup I saw Sunday night, in 6-11 Baye Fall (Denver Prep) vs. “Duke’s” 6-10 Xavier Booker.
Fall is the compelling “big athlete” in the class, and was impossible to keep away from the glass as a scorer and rebounder.
Booker’s major edge in the head-up battle was in his jump shooting: the left hander hit five 3s, four of those in the second half.
*Six-three Mikey Williams, he of the gazillion (give or take a billion) Instagram followers, is expected to return to San Diego’s San Ysidro High for his senior season after spending the 2020-21 and ’21-22 school years at prep schools in North Carolina, is in the camp and playing for “North Carolina”.
Williams last played at the camp in 2019, as the only eighth-grader there, at Norwalk (CA) Cerritos College when Evan Mobley, Cade Cunningham and Scottie Barnes were the head-liners.
He was credited by the stat crew with quite a line: 20 points (six of 20 from the field), eight assists and eight turnovers.
I’ll focus on his game with “Virginia” Saturday afternoon on Court 1.
*And 6-5 Robert Hinton closed the game action Sunday night with quite a bang.
Well, it wasn’t really a bang (aka, dunk) but a transition layup just a second before the buzzer that gave “UCLA” its 72-20 victory against “Arizona”.
Hinton, who scored a team-high 14 points, is one of two c/o 2024 members for Studio City Harvard-Westlake that have had strong springs on the EYBL circuit, Hinton with the Why Not 16s team and 6-4 Trent Perry with Vegas Elite.
Perry couldn’t attend the camp (because of final exams set for Monday and Tuesday) but had strong Memorial Weekend session with Vegas Elite after being moved up from its 16s to 17s squad.
Harvard-Westlake is expected to be Southern California’s top challenger to State Open Champion Corona Centennial in 2022-23 and another reason why is 6-8 Brady Dunlap, one of the better jump shooters in the national c/o of 2023.
He was a late scratch here because of an ankle injury he suffered last week.
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