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IRVINE — Orange County — specially, as we residents like to refer to it as, “the South County” — will serve as the hot spot for the California high school boys’ hoops scene this weekend.

The first-ever “Cali Live Tournament”, organized and run by the Southern California Interscholastic Basketball Coaches Association, will play host to an expected 163 high school teams.

On those players who still have eligibility running on their “only four years, once you step foot into a classroom as a freshman ” high school competition clocks permitted to participate.

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DRAPER, UT — The best of what Utah and Idaho have to offer in boys’ high school basketball programs — and that’s a whole lot of quality teams, players, and coaches — has been on display, via the Great Western Summer Classic, for the past two days at Juan Diego High in this suburb of Salt Lake City.

Even in knowing some teams were missing key players (injuries; or what-not) and transitions are being made from “what they were last season” to “what they will be in 2023-24”, the event produced some terrific games during the Wednesday and Thursday sessions I was courtside for.

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REDONDO BEACH — The two-day, first “Summer Beach Bash”, hosted by Redondo Union High, is set to tip off Saturday morning at 9 o’clock, with 29 games played over Saturday and Sunday in each of the school’s two gymnasiums.

Among the programs set to participate in the event are five (State Open Division Champion Harvard-Westlake; State Division I winner Notre Dame of Sherman Oaks; St. John Bosco; Bishop Montgomery and St. Bernard) of the eight that played in the 2023 CIF Southern Section Open Division playoffs.

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LAS VEGAS — Hindsight may eventually alter the perception.

But, in its immediate aftermath, I’m going to deem the 21^st Pangos All-American Camp as “Three Days of the Guard”.

In the absence of more than one dominant post player, at both ends of the floor, it was left to a multitude of quality backcourt players, across the classes of 2024 and ’25, to create most of the buzz in the Bishop Gorman High gymnasiums.

And the likes of Philadelphia’s Rob Wright, Ahmad Nowell and Jalil Bethea; San Fernando Valley-based Trent Perry, and cousins Mercy Miller and Vyctorius Miller; Labaron Philon of Alabama; Tahaad Pettiford of Jersey City; Adam Njie of the Bronx; Boogie Fland of upper-state New York, and Jasper Johnson of Kentucky were like an enraged hive of bees darting about the three courts used for the games Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.

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LAS VEGAS — At 16-1 and 14-3, respectively, in spring Nike/EYBL competition, Team Final and Team Thad are among the favorites going into the 17s division of the July 6-9 Peach Jam in the South Carolina-Georgia border city of North Augusta.

And, after the first two days of the 21^st Pangos All-American Camp, it’s understandable why that’s the case.

*Three of the Philadelphia-based Team Team’s guards, Rob Wright (Neumann Goretti), Ahmad Nowell (Imotep) and Jalil Bethea (Archbishop Wood), are on a short list — of about 10 or so — of the best “point guard-types” in the national Class of 2024.

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