SoCalHoops Tournament & Recruiting News

Nike Summer Championship No More:
Now The "Nike Global Challenge"--Aug. 2, 2000

	What: Nike Global Challenge
	When:  August 3-6, 2000
	Where: Beaverton, OR
	Who: 16 Top Nike Teams

We took a few days off to catch up on work (yes, real work again intrudes), but we're back to tell you about a tournament we will not be attending (due to other travel commitments next week).  For the last few years, Nike has sponsored two tournaments in San Diego:  A winter tournament known as the "Nike National Prep Classic", aka the Nike Winter Championships, and another, run at the end of the summer, called the "Nike Summer National Championship".   But no more, as Nike has pulled its sponsorship of the winter tournament and moved the summer tournamnent to it's Portland headquarters in Beaverton. We've never been to the Tualatin Hills Park & Rec Center, which has two courts and which will host the Global Challenge, but we're betting it's a lot smaller and cozier than the gigantic dome High-Five USA facility with 8 courts at USIU which previously hosted the Nike Summer Championships.

This year's tournament is taking on an international flavor (hence the name "Global" which may be a bit pretentious considering there are only 15 teams entered thus far), with teams from Spain, Greece, Yugoslavia, France, Canada, and the Virgin Islands (ok, so it's probably the US Virgins, but it's still pretty unusual for a team from the Virgin Islands to be playing in any high school-level tournament).  As of now, it's just a fifteen team tournament, featuring that great mystery team in Pool B, "TBD" aka, "to be determined."     And overall, the tournament will feature far fewer Nike-sponsored high-profile teams than the old Nike Summer National Championship, which last year was not restricted entirely to Nike teams, but also included some of the better adidas and non-sponsored teams as well, and included about 32 teams competing over four days. 

Still, if you head up to Beaverton to watch this, you'll still get the chance to see Boo Williams, Houston Hoops (which should still be coached by Josh Pastner), the St. Louis Eagles, Ernie Lorch's Riverside Church squad from New York City, the Wisconsin Playground Warriors, the Georgia Stars, two teams from the Northwest, the Portland Legends, who also just won the ARC Grand Finale and the Emerald City Pioneers, and finally the only team from SoCal, Pat Barrett's Southern California All-Stars, featuring Tyson Chandler, Josh Childress, Eddie Draughan, Jamal Sampson, Shaun Michel, and several other top local players.  

We won't be attending the tournament this year (too much July travel, and in another week we leave for Richmond, VA and Cincinnati, OH, where we'll cover the Maccabi Games, taking place at these two venues over the course of an entire week, and featuring teams from all over the world as well as the local guys, including a team from Los Angeles competing for its 4th consecutive gold medal in Richmond, while Cinncinati will have teams from Long Beach and Orange County. . . but that's another story).   While we won't be in Portland for the Global Challenge, we're pretty sure that either Tracy Pierson or Greg Hicks from PacWestHoops will be there reporting on the SoCal guys, and even if they aren't you can still follow the results on SportsCombine a nice website which also featured results throughout the spring and summer of most of the larger Nike events, including complete pools, schedules, results and highlights from spring events like the Boo Williams Classic and the Nike Bluegrass, and updates, team schedules and stories on this summer's Peach Jam Invitational.  

In any event, here are pools for the Nike Global Challenge:

If you're planning to attend, here's the schedule, which features two days of pool play (one game for each team tomorrow, two on Friday and then championship bracket play on Saturday and Sunday):

As noted, bracket play begins on Saturday and continues through Sunday. Here's the schedule:

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