Frank Burlison

ORANGE and GARDEN GROVE, Ca. – It was a very long Memorial Weekend Saturday of high school basketball in the region of Southern California known as “Orange County”.

The collection of cities got that tag from the orange groves that were once so abundant in the area.

In fact, Anaheim used to be lined with them before this cartoonist/visionary named Walt Disney bought up large parcels of land in the city for which he planned to build something beyond an “amusement park” in the mid-1950s.

The rest is a history lesson that I’m sure most of you are familiar with.

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SAN PABLO, Ca. – Sunday’s second day of the West Coast Elite All-Star Camp/Northern California at Contra Costa Community College proved a nice showcase for an impressive group of players from the Class of 2018.

Two of those were left-handed point guards that, through the two games they played earlier in the day and then during the Top 20 All-Star game late in the afternoon.

Elijah Hardy was a reserve on the Oakland Bishop O’Dowd team that won the 2015 State Open Division championship and then a starter last season for the Dragons when they lost in the Northern California Division III title game.

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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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