July 12, 2010
Summer Slam concludes
It’s over. Day two of the Foothill Juco Summer Slam has concluded with the respective coaches involved excited, upbeat, fair-to-middling, fretting some or downright worried about their upcoming seasons. But all spectators -- as well as these coaches -- should keep in mind that the contests these past two days in the Los Altos Hills also featured a number of players who won’t necessarily see much playing time come the real thing.
Yes, the Foothill Juco Summer Slam, part three, is in the books. It’s true, an overabundance of open outside jumpers barely introduced themselves to the fickle iron lady but this was absolutely balanced out by uncountable floor burns as heart and desire were on full display.
Here’s the top five players we witnessed:
- 6-foot-1, Peter Pappageorge, Canada: It wasn’t a Pappageorge torrid streak blanketing the second day, more simple normalcy, which meant a team-leading total of points -- what’s perplexing is the number of times opponents simply left the ex-Burlingame High star open for a clean outside look -- why and how?
- 7-foot-0, Kyle Luckett, Chabot: Get thee to a weight room (more often) and your paycheck will have more zeroes after next season.
- 6-foot-2, Mike McChristian, Yuba: McChristian stood out as a defensive stopper who also often pokes the ball away with his long arms -- he looked confident on fastbreaks, displaying a great surveying-the-court floor vision -- a cerebral leader who never looked for a shot.
- 6-foot-6, Jourdan Demuynck, Chabot: He wasn’t as effective as the day earlier but still showed his patented outside jumper plus enough of a dribble-drive change of pace and that perfect size for a wing.
- 6-foot-2, Julian Green, Modesto: Whoever lands him will have an all-around backcourter who can shoot, pass and defend.
Other notes:
Foothill’s Shawn Grant (St. Francis High) was MIA due to being an invitee to the Jerry Mullens Sports Top 120 Camp for junior college players in Tulsa ... Likewise, 6-foot-2 Kyle Hypes of Foothill, missed day one here because of his participation in Mullen’s Junior College All Star 80 camp ... 6-foot-2 former El Camino High (South San Francisco) star Jonathan Tuason enjoyed a trio of left corner treys in one game plus a banked-in dribble-drive, 240 degree spin, underhanded flip shot layup ... Yuba’s Caleb Johnson physically took it to defenders much more on Saturday, and these were a bevy of big and wide frontcourters populating the College of the Sequoias roster ... Spencer Butterfield of Yuba looked comfortable from distance in a couple of trey attempts on Saturday ... Diablo Valley College, short of bigs the past couple of seasons or so, has players listed at 6-foot-8 (Raphael Carter - Ohio), two at 6-foot-7 (Zach Payne - De La Salle High and Louis Lowe - Fremont High, Oakland), a pair at 6-foot-6 (Jake Modeste - Christian Brothers, DeMarcus Wishom - Vista Del Lago) and one at 6-foot-5 (Dan Zitani - Bridgemont High) so look for more Viking frontcourt fight ... Foothill has loaded up with locals, especially from but not limited to the West Catholic Athletic league in the aforementioned Grant, Freddy Eberhardt (Bellarmine), Jordan Ruedy (Serra), Suhail Mohammadi (Carlmont), Ben Neves and James Weimer (Westmont), Brendan Carroll (St. Lawrence and Jimmy Remeke (Willow Glen) ...
One note pertaining strictly to the location of the Foothill gymnasium: if the action slows, look out the open door to the west and wistfully gaze upon the views of multi-million dollar homes gracing the horizon.
We offer this moment of Nor Cal Preps zen to those players -- actually to the coaches of the kids -- whose jersey numbers didn’t correspond to those in the official program: if you played well over these two days but nobody knew who you were, did you make an impression?
Finally, anyone have a surefire remedy for bleacher butt?