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SAN PABLO, Ca. – Saturday’s Day I of the first West Coast Elite All-Star Camp/Northern California at Contra Costa Community College showed off some of the more promising soon-to-be high school basketball players in the region.

And, in a setting in which a whole lot of eighth graders showed off considerable combinations of skill, polish and “upside”, none of those players were quite as impressive, from start to finish, as was 6-foot-4 Hunter Clarke (Joaquin Intermediate in Moraga).

Clarke, who is scheduled to attend Campolindo High in Moraga, lives close to the campus of Saint Mary’s College.

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HAMPTON, Va. – The third session of Nike’s Elite Youth Basketball League served to illustrate a point that has already been well-served throughout the spring:

The EYBL has a virtual monopoly on the best of the “bigs” in the national high school Class of 2017.

Six players who stand at least 6-foot-10 and or go right at 7-foot, DeAndre Ayton, Wendell Carter, Jaren Jackson, Brandon McCoy, Nicholas Richards and Mitchell Robinson, were consistently exceptional and often spectacular over the weekend in the Boo Williams Sports Complex.

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HAMPTON, Va. – The Minnesota-based Howard Pulley team improved to 10-0 during the third weekend of Nike Elite Youth Basketball League play on Saturday in the Boo Williams Athletic Complex.

The squad could have just as easily come out of the day at 8-2, though.

Howard Pulley needed four-minute overtimes to knock off Georgia’s Southern Stampede, 85-82, Saturday morning, and then another extra period – and a fortuitous foul call with ninth-tenths of a second to go in OT – to overcome Southern California’s Cal Supreme, 92-91, some eight or so hours later.

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HAMPTON, Va. – Volume III of the 2016 Nike Elite Youth Basketball League tipped off Friday evening at the eight-court, Boo Williams Sports Complex.

Twenty-one games were contested and I watched all of two of them and healthy portions (aka, “large amount”) of three others.

And, for those of you keeping score – or tabs on me – I watched them in this sequence and on these courts . . .

*Court 6, Team Final (PA) 83, The Family (MI) 60: Team Final and MOKAN Elite are each 7-1 in the D Division.

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LAGUNA NIGUEL, Ca. – If the BurlisonOnBasketball SoCal all-Class of 2018 looks familiar, it should:

Ten of the players 12 first-team selections were on the squad a year ago – when the Class of 2018 was made up of freshmen.

And there is one more thing this squad has in common with the one selected after the 2014-15 season:

There is the same player of the Year.

And Riley Battin was even better as a sophomore than he was a year ago, when he averaged 21.9 points and 10.5 rebounds for an Oak Park team that was beaten in the second round of the CIF Southern Section IAA playoffs.

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