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  LAGUNA NIGUEL – The dazzling play of Murray State sophomore-and-never-to-be-junior Ja Morant wasn’t the only highlight of Thursday’s first 16 first-round NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Tournament games.

  It just seemed as if that was the case . . .

  It wasn’t just the gaudy numbers he produced – 17 points on just nine shots from the field; 11 rebounds and 16 assists – nor the surprisingly lopsided win over Marquette in the West Regional game in Hartford (welcome to geography, NCAA tourney-style) that made the best guard in the world not playing in the NBA the de facto star of stars Thursday.

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  LAGUNA NIGUEL, Ca. – My reactions to the 2019 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Tournament bracket:

  *The top seeds (Duke/East, Virginia/South, North Carolina/Midwest and Gonzaga/West) were clear cut – especially after Auburn beat the snot out of Tennessee in the SEC final Sunday.

  *The strongest “1-2 seed combination”, IMHO, is North Carolina and Kentucky in the Midwest.

  SEC Tourney champion and No. 5 seed Auburn and Big 12 Tourney winner and No. 6 seed Iowa State seem the obvious biggest obstacles to a UNC-UK regional showdown in Kansas City on March 31.

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  DOWNEY – Some of the better players from the Class of 2019 that are still in search of a college destination were on display Saturday at St. Pius X-St. Matthias Academy during the Beach City Hoops (in conjunction with Gamepoint-OC) Unsigned Senior Showcase.

    There was a plethora of superb jump shooters in attendance, notably Mission League products Vince Fier (Mission Hills Alemany) and Alex Blanco (Notre Dame-Sherman Oaks) along with Quincy Adams (Hollywood).

  A cluster of extremely quick point guards were in the building, too, led by the dynamic John Clausell (Leuzinger/PICTURED) who put on his usual display of end-to-end acceleration and putting-right-in-shooters’-hands playmaking.

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  ETIWANDA – “Big O” has been locked in as Chino Hills senior Onyeka Okongwu’s moniker for about as long as he’s been a dominant force on the high school hoops scene – basically, since November of his freshman year.

   But, after leading his team to a stunning, come-from-behind, 49-47 victory over host and top seed Etiwanda Tuesday night in the State Southern Regional DI final, it’s apparent that at least one other tag would be appropriate for the 6-foot-9, USC-bound Okongwu:

  Mr. March.

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  NORWALK, Ca. – National ratings for middle-school players are always more than a bit nebulous, at best.

   That being established, it’s difficult imagining there being a more dominant eighth-grader anywhere than was Baye Fall during the seventh Pangos Junior All-American Camp that wrapped up Sunday afternoon at Cerritos Community College.

   The 6-foot-9 Fall, who attends Lincoln Charter School in Denver and came to the U.S. from Senegal about a year or so ago, crushed the competition and capped his two-day performance with 13 points, 14 rebounds and six blocked shots (stats courtesy @devin_ugland) in the “Best of the Best” all-star game.

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