Frank Burlison

SANTA ANA, Ca. – The Mater Dei Summer Varsity Tournament, one of the better ways to sneak a peek at some of the better programs in the Southland for the following season, tips off Friday afternoon at 3 o’clock.

Games will be played, simultaneously, on the three courts in Mater Dei’s Meruelo Athletic Center (1202 W. Edinger, Santa Ana), Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Games tip off on each court at 8 a.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Games will also be played at Orange Lutheran (2222 North Santiago, Orange) on Friday and Saturday.

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LONG BEACH, Ca. – The 11^th version of the Pangos All-American Camp wrapped up mid-Sunday afternoon at Cabrillo High.

A couple of years’ worth of hindsight – at least two college seasons and one NBA draft – will provide some reasonable perspective as to really how “good” No. 11 was.

But the immediate inclination – at least on my part – is to suggest that the players in the camp, as a collective, could end up holding up pretty well against those in attendance at the first 10 sessions.

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LONG BEACH, Ca. — In basketball, some players assume that “asserting yourself” and “playing hard” equates “pounding the ball incessantly” and/or “getting up as many shots as I can”.

I guess I should have written “mistakenly assume”.

Fortunately, there are more than enough guys who understand the true meaning of “playing hard”.

And plenty of those young men were on display Saturday afternoon and evening during Day II of the 11th Pangos All-American Camp at Cabrillo High.

Among those were:

*Stephen Zimmerman (6-foot-11/Las Vegas Bishop Gorman High/”Team Stanford”).

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LONG BEACH, Ca. – Day I – well, to be accurate, Night I – of the 11^th Pangos All-American Camp got underway Friday.

And those in the  Cabrillo High gymnasium didn’t have to wait long to be courtside witnesses to what should prove to be the first of what will be a lot of cool individual matchups over the three-day event which annually draws some of the best high school hoopsters, from coast to coast.

Emmanuel Mudiay (Dallas, TX/Prime Prep Academy) and Josh Perkins (Aurora, CO/Regis Jesuit) are generally thought to be two of the half-dozen or so best point guard prospects in the Class of 2014.

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CORONA, Ca. – If a survey had been taken just minutes before the start of the “Ballislife Magic Memorial Day Festival” Saturday morning, which team would have been the consensus to win the event’s top (Battle Zone 17) division?

Well, the Dream Vision (17) squad, led by the preeminent post player in the western U.S. of A. (Stephen Zimmerman of Bishop Gorman in Las Vegas), would have been a strong possibility.

So would have the Branch West team (which won the Pangos Spring Sweet 16), Compton Magic Select (and its roster of 2015 standouts), L.A.

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