inland team roster & results

As one of the best teams in the tournament, Inland finished, not unexpectedly, at 3-0 in their pool, beating (in this order) Roughriders (which was essentially the Union City HS team) 98-44, Silicon Valley Blue Chips 70-50, and Modesto Slam N Jam #1 by a score of 69-50. This then put Elvert "Kool Aid" Perry's team into the Gold Bracket where they quickly went through their first two opponents, beating Amer-I-Can #2 in the Round of 16 on Sunday night, then beating EBO pretty decisively on Monday morning in the "Elite 8" and then ultimately suffering an 8 point loss to the LA Rockfish in the semifinals at 1:00 p.m. in the main gym at Sunnyside. Here's the roster from this loaded team:

Jason Braxton	6'-3" Jr. PG	Canyon Springs
Richard Cobbs	6'-5" Fr. SF/SG	Canyon Springs
Alex Acker	6'-5" Jr. F	Eisenhower
Paul Roby	5'-10" Jr. G	Cajon
Chris Stallworth	6'-5" Jr. SG/SF	San Gorgonio
Jason Burrell	6'-4" Jr. SG/SF	Etiwanda
Leon Rosborough	6'-3" Jr. SG	Canyon Springs
Tron Smith	6'-0" So. G	Canyon Springs
Howard Taylor	6'-1" Jr. G	Canyon Springs
Sylvester Seay	6'-7" Fr. SF/SG	San Bernardino
Alfonso James	6'-0" So. G	Canyon Springs
Richard Roby	6'-1" Fr. G	Cajon
Grayland Walter	6'-1" Fr. G	JW North
Royal Taylor	5'-10" So. G	Canyon Springs

One of the strongest teams in the tournament, Inland does what it did best without a real post player or anyone over 6'-7": Run, run and then run some more, and pick up points around the basket with swarming defense. Jason Braxton again showed why he's got a lot of high major schools pursuing him, pushing the break, leading his team with tremendous speed and energy and playing absolutely flawless defense. And on the younger end of the spectrum, Richard Cobbs again showed that he continues to be one of the best freshmen around, getting inside and posting up guys bigger than him (which we saw him do a lot last summer before he even entered high school, but which we didn't see much of during the season or during the RSL. . . go figure?) and getting lots of points inside and in the paint as well as again doing what he's always done well for the past year or more, shooting the long-range open shot. It would be nice if Richard could also develop a pull-up jumper to go along with his outside catch and release shot, and he does have the ball-handling skills to also be able to shoot coming off a screen, but we just didn't see a lot of that with mostly up and down the court offense. We obviously didn't get enough time to watch the rest of this team enough to make any really meaningful comments, but they are clearly very talented, have tremendous athleticism and we'll be watching for them this summer.