LONG BEACH – By the time the two-day, Pangos Junior All-American boys’ basketball camp wrapped up with the “Best of the Best” game Sunday afternoon at McBride, High there wasn’t much mystery as to the identity of the two best players in the 14th annual event.
Eighth- and seventh-graders Omar Muhammad and Braylin Calhoun (pictured, left to right) shared camp Most Outstanding Player honors in a camp that attracted 130 or so middle-school aged hoopers – and a cluster of fifth- and sixth graders, too – from 14 states and Canada.
The 6-foot-3 Muhammad (who is from Clovis in Fresno County) was a standout here year ago while nearly three inches shorter but every bit as vertically explosive.
Muhammad, who has not decided where he will attend high school next fall, dropped a game-high 23 points (with four rebounds, three assists and a steal while being fouled eight times) for Team Black in its 111-100 loss to Team White in the Best of the Best finale, which included 23 players from the Class of 2030 and eight from 2031.
The 6-4 Calhoun (who scored 17 points for the white jersey-wearing Best of the Best squad), attends Munising Public School, a K-12 school with about 570 students in a town with a population of just less than 2,000 that is located about 410 miles northwest of Detroit and sits on the shore of Lake Superior.
He and his family (his mother made the trip to Long Beach with him) plan to move to Milwaukee, located about 290 miles southwest of Munising, once school is out for the summer.
Both Muhammad and Calhoun are already gifted and polished enough to earn the rare and – maybe – initial invitations to eighth and seventh graders from Director Dinos Trigonis to his Pangos High School All-American Camp (scheduled for May 31-June at Bishop Gorman High in Las Vegas).
Sharing Most Valuable Player honors in the Best of the Best Game, from the white jerseys, were eighth-grade guards Yakai Craig of Lake Forest (he is expected to enroll at Santa Margarita) and Cameron Shepard of Chatsworth.
Their all-star game stats are all but identical: 15 points, eight rebounds, four assists and two steals for Shepard and 15, two rebounds and four assists – with three 3s – for Craig.
Six-four eighth grader Jayden Jones (Burbank) added 15 points with nine rebounds and six assists for the black jerseys.
Another player who was a standout here a year ago and returned – three-plus inches taller – as an eighth grader is 6-7 Bryce Bible (U Prep Academy in Glendale).
His father, Bruce Bible, was a long-time football coach at Los Alamitos High before becoming the Director of Football Operations at Sierra Canyon three years ago.
Bible had six points and five rebounds in the Best of the Best contest. Bruce Bible said his son could land at Sierra Canyon, Millikan or St. John Bosco as a freshman.
Two other seventh graders who played in the final all-star game are 6-2 Roy Walker Jr. (DNA Prep in Chatsworth/his dad is the head basketball coach at Taft in Woodland Hills) and 6-5 Spencer White (St. Paschal Baylon in Thousand Oaks).
White’s father, Russell, is the head coach at Cal Lutheran and coached current NBA guards De’Anthony Melton and Brandon Williams when they attended Crespi High.
White’s brother, Peyton, is a freshman forward at the University of Nevada in Reno.
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