sweet 16 tournament announcement

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SoCalHoops Recruiting News

EBO-EA Sports Sweet 16 Tournament
Next Weekend In Fresno--(Sept. 9, 2000)

We bumped into, and spent some time yesterday, with Mats (aka Darren Matsubara, coach and head honcho of the EBO/EA Sports program up in Fresno and the tournament host), and while we've previously posted some information about this tournament, including a big splashy notice on our front page, it's time again to remind everyone that there is something else happening next weekend besides college football.

The weekend of the 15th-17th of September is smack in the middle of the NCAA fall exposure/contact period, and what better place to spend it than in Fresno, California, raisin capital of the world, a great place to buy pistachios, and home of some of the West Coast's best basketball, especially when Mats invites 31 of the top teams in the west to participate and they show up (there will be 32 teams, including the EBO/EA Sports squad, so perhaps it should be called the "Sweet 16x2"). And Fresno is a destination that will have a lot of college coaches driving up and down Interstate 5 and US 99 just to get to by next Friday night when the EBO-EA "Sweet 16" Tournament gets going.

The Sweet 16 Tournament, is not as our friend Lorenzo Harris at NorCal Preps noted, "the last major nonacademic event of the year involving Northern California teams". . . .not to quibble about it, but many of the same NorCal teams who will be there next weekend, will also participate in the Double Pump Fall Premier Tournament (along with many national-level teams from all over the country) from September 22-24 down in SoCal, and there's also the Arizona Preps Fall Showcase the weekend of September 29-Oct. 1, which will also feature some NorCal guys from what we hear, but the Sweet 16 will feature a ton of Northern California players, perhaps more than at any other fall exposure event we know about. But there will also be a number of top SoCal teams as well and the teams we'd expect to see (both North and South) playing at Fresno's Sunnyside HS and Washington Union HS will include:

Belmont Shore (Dijon Thompson, Harrison Schaen, Cody Pearson, Patrick Haddan, Brian Baker)
LA Rockfish (Timothy Drisdom, Josh Dunaj, Khalief Ford, Nick Curtis, Alex Graham, Ryan Moore)
LA Paladins (Deangelo Collins, Doug Thomas, Anthony Davis, Terrell Stovall, Andre Patterson)
EBO/EA Sports (Antonio Lawrence, Fabrice M'Balla, Phillip Johnson, Jovance Coleman, Maurice Shaw, David Gale)
Next Level (Brandon Worthy, Joe Calderon, Hassan Houston)
Clovis West (Chris Hernandez, Charlie Rodriguez --pending INS approval)
Inland (Jason Braxton, Richard Cobbs, Leon Rosborough, Tron Smith, Sylvester Seay)
805 (Dommanic Ingerson, Armando Surratt, Adam Allegro, Johnn Grey, Joel Smith, Ryan Zimerman, Trey Putnam)
Oakland Soldiers I (Chuck Hayes, Joe See, Charles Brown, Will Venable, Dustin Brown, Demarshay Johnson, David Paris)
Oakland Soldiers II (Leon Powe, Deshawn Freeman, Rekalin Sims, John Sharper, Marquis Kately, Chase Moore)
SSA I (Mike Chambers, Jason Parker, Johny Sotelo, Phil Goodman, Cletus Peters)
2 The Hoop (Maurice Tyree, Phil Rasmussen, Josh Davis, Grant Gidaro, Adam Harper, Joey Lemus)
Modesto Slam N Jam (Bobby Cole)
The Hood (Tyson Chandler, Keion Kindred, Darius Sanders, Samir Hernandez, Bobby Jones)
NorCal Magic (Tremaine Davis, Keith Wilright, Will Bonner, Geormel Benson?)

And many more. . . we'll have more rosters and the official list of teams entered in the tournament in the coming days so stay tuned.