abcd player update

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SoCalHoops Recruiting News

ABCD Camp: Southern California
Players Report No. 1--(July 9, 2001)

ABCD is a smorgasbord of talent, and there's really very little drop off from top to bottom, but at the top there are a few who are very, very talented, but who are, at least for the meantime, playing some awful basketball. We've been around the "all-star" style of basketball for years, but this is our first trip to ABCD and the style of play being exhibited by some of the top stars for the last two days, according to noted scout and guru Tom Konchalski, is "just awful." Not that these guys aren't absolutely talented, athletic specimens who can jump out of the gym, but they are playing horrible basketball, a selfish style of play that features rebounding and outlet passes by the bigs, one pass or a shot from the point guards, and three or four other guys either standing around or running up and down but never touching the ball. Well, it's not that extreme, but with many of the players trying to boost their stats to get positioned for the all-star games, it's a very interesting process to watch the "suspects" become even more and more "suspect" as they become complete ball hogs.

There are some standouts though, guys who are getting it done, moving the ball, passing, and even playing defense. Of course no one who is not here will believe this but the player who is absolutely shocking everyone in attendance who knows him is Antonio Lawrence (6'-5" Sr. F/G) from Jacksonville, Florida who is reportedly transferring to Fresno. Antonio plays for EBO and has been known for the past two years as one of the biggest ball-hogs (a very talented ball-hog, but still not known as a passer), and he took an extremely hard rap from everyone up in Fresno at the Mats Madness tournament in May. But here, Antonio has taken his "team" pills, and since he's teamed up with Tim Drisdom (6'-4" Sr. PG), and Lenny Cooke (6'-6" Sr. F), he's passing the ball, sharing, and playing like a different guy. It's amazing, and he's making believers out of a lot of people. Last week, perhaps as a promo for ABCD, perhaps not, AP carried a story about Lawrence which was carried by the LA Daily News, touting him as one of the most talented players in the country, who is possibly thinking about committing early, signing a NLI but then making the jump to the NBA. And watching him here, it's not a far-fetched idea, and one which also has some NBA scouts and coaches here taking a really hard look. Of course those NBA scouts and coaches are also taking a hard look at Lenny Cooke, who was last year's underclass ABCD all star MVP, and Lenny is trying to repeat the feat this year.

But this report is supposed to be about the Southern California guys, so let's talk about them. In no particular order, here's what they're doing:

Trevor Ariza (6'-7" Jr. F) Westchester-- Trevor as of last night was one of the leading scorers in the entire camp, which is pretty amazing considering he's a part-time starter for his Westchester HS team, which also just demonstrates how deep, how talented and how good Westchester really is. Trevor is averaging 19 ppt and he's been phenomenal, shooting 85% from the field, grabbing 2 steals a game, and 6.5 rebounds per game. After yesterday's games, he was the second highest rated scorer, No. 2 among the top 10 scorers in the entire camp. He's really opening a lot of eyes, and has coaches drooling for what they'll be looking forward to seeing next year when he'll get very highly recruited.

DeAngelo Collins (6'-9" Sr. F) Inglewood-- He's had an up and down camp, playing alternately very hard and at other times hardly seeming to be there at all. He's on a team which is being coached by Kool Aid Perry of Inland and Julius Patterson of IEBP, which also features Richard Cobbs, but they are not in the same line. Kool is really working well with DeAngelo and is getting a lot out of him. Today's USA Today featured a small blurb about DeAngelo and his quest for the NBA, and right now he's telling everyone who will listen that he's coming out next year. Not an absolute declaration, but you can take it to the bank. After the first day, DeAngelo was averaging 11 rebounds per game but that's gone down a bit. We also think that the stats (including points) that are being kept here by the kids running these incredibly high tech little boxes, basically little mini-computers which are produced by Score Technologies of Richmond, VA, are incredibly inaccurate, especially when it comes to assists. But that's a different story. DeAngelo is clearly among the more dominant big-men in this camp and his skills are among the top here. Too bad he'll never play in college. . . .

Nate Carter (6'-6" Sr. F/G) San Diego-- We really haven't been able to hook up with any of Nate's games, at least not yet, but he's playing well, as are the rest of the California guys, averaging about 8 ppg and 7 rpg. Again, we don't really trust the stats here, but we hear that Nate is doing well from Ollie Goulston, his club coach.

Richard Cobbs (6'-6" Jr. F/G) Moreno Valley--Richard looks bigger, stronger, but for some reason he's not getting a lot of touches here, and his shot also seems to be way off. The stats say that he's only shooting about 39% from the field, but his three point shooting is pretty accurate and that's kind of saving the rest of his game, although he hasn't had a lot of production. Like a lot of other guys here, the closer things get to the all-star game, the more selfishly his teammates are becoming and so he's seeing the ball less and less. But when he does get it, he's looking very good.

Ashanti Cook (6'-3" Sr. G) Westchester--Ashanti is playing solidly, but he too isn't getting the ball in his hands very much and his assists are way down from what we'd expect. He's on the same team as Allan Ray, who just committed to Villanova at a press conference here today, and so he is also having some "sharing" problems. He's in a different five usually, teamed instead with Marcus Watkins, a 6'-4" SG from Texas, Gary Ware a 6'8" center from Detroit, and Jonathan Haywood from Bishop Amat, but with 9 guys on his team, there have been times that Ray never comes out of the game. But he's here and playing smart, passing the ball well and not succumbing to the temptation (like some others) of freezing out teammates. Ed Azzam would be proud.

Tim Drisdom (6'-4" Sr. PG)--Tim is playing really well from what we've seen, and he's really passing the ball well, but like everyone else, because of the high level of talent on his team, it took him one or two games just to get his teammates' attention. Again, he's with Lenny Cook and Antonio Lawrence, and since Antonio is passing the ball too, it looks like Tim's natural style of distributing the ball is infectious. The Utah coaches are still sitting across the gym at every one of his games, hoping that he'll pull the trigger, and we assume that it's the same for USC, which now has Curtis Townsend (formerly of Michigan) as the assistant coach here at the camp. Utah may be getting a little impatient though and it looks like they may start recruiting C.J. Watson from Bishop Gorman in Las Vegas if Tim doesn't choose the Utes. We've watched just about all of Tim's games, and he's played well, passed the ball a lot, has had more turnovers than we'd like to see (the stats say he's averaging close to 3 per game), but then again, don't trust the stats here. He's also averaging close to four assists per game, but we'd say it's more like 6 or 7. . .

Khalif Ford (6'-1" Jr. PG)-- Khalif is on a team with some very selfish guys, who are really freezing him out, at least they were yesterday when his team played Drisdom's. Ford is playing well from what we've seen, averaging about 4 ppg and 3 apg, and so this year will really be a learning experience. In fact the couple of early games where he was getting frozen out were learning games, and he had a spectacular game in the late session last night, driving to the basket and shooting well from outside.

David Gale (6'-1" Sr. PG)--David has played solidly, and on Sunday night he had his best game, hitting for 11 points and 8 assists with two steals, hitting two threes. His team too though features the same syndrome that we've seen on other teams, which is a surfeit of guys who are all trying to do the spectacular rather than actually playing the game. When teamed up with Deron Williams (6'-3" Sr. PG) from The Colony in Texas, the two managed to move the ball well, scoring from inside and outside, and they beat Brad Buckman's (6'-10" Sr. F) previously undefeated team (which also features SoCal product Omar Wilkes), by 30 points. He's having a good camp but would benefit more here by playing a more selfish style. . .

Jonathan Haywood (6'-6" Sr. F)-- Jon was averaging about 8 ppg before last night's game (which we didn't see), and is doing, according to Dave Benezra, "what he does best" which is slash and drive. But again, he has both the fortune and misfortune of being teamed with Allan Ray, and like others who have very high profile point guards on their team, the ball is just not getting shared a lot. Haywood is rebounding adequately, and has attracted some solid mid-major interest from what we've heard.

Ekene Ibekewe (6'-9" Jr. F)-- Ekene is not setting the place on fire from a statistics point of view, but he's attracting a lot of interest with his size, his agility and basketball skills, and he has the potential to be a high major player if he could get himself positioned properly and continues to work on developing his skills. Again this is one of those times where we just absolutely will not trust the stats keepers, because they have him only averaging 2.3 rebounds per game, and we just know that's inaccurate as hell, by a factor of about 3. We don't think he'll make the underclass all-star game, but then you never know. . .

Keion Kindred (6'-4" Sr. PG)--Ok, we're sold, Keion is a point guard. He's on the same team as Anthony Roberson (6'-2" Sr. PG) who committed earlier last week to Florida immediately after taking a visit to Michigan, but he's fortunately in a different 5 than Roberson... Marcus Williams (6'-2" Jr. G) from Crenshaw hasn't been so lucky. . . more about that in a minute below. . .Keion though is among the most balanced of the point guards, playing absolutely unselfishly, distributing freely, shooting well, rebounding, and playing great defense. We hope he's a qualifier and doesn't also listen to the knuckleheads talking about the NBA, because he will be a great, great college point guard.

Jason McKinney (5'-11" Sr. PG)-- Jason has steadily been gaining ground here after a slow start, and when he takes the showy stuff out of his game, he's pretty good. Of course there were still a few times when he tried the behind the back pass and the ball sailed wildly out of bounds, but when he can restrain himself and curb his natural inclinations to pretend he's Baron Davis, he's a capable ball-handler and a decent defender. He's also attracting some attention from some east coast schools, which is fine with him because from what he's told us in the past that's where he wants to be after high school. For a young man who played JV as a freshman, barely played as a soph, and missed almost all of last year with a leg injury, he's still got a lot of upside, but you can see that he needs a lot more game time to improve the decision-making. Still, we really like him and he'll be a solid recruit by the spring if he doesn't commit in the fall.

Donovan Morris (6'-3" Sr. SG)-- Morris is another of the SoCal guys who is playing solidly, not overwhelming the stats folks with numbers, but he's making a lot of others around him look really, really good. Which of course is not going unnoticed by the college coaches. He's getting a lot of touches too, notwithstanding that Raymond Felton (6'-1" Sr. PG) from Latta, SC, is on his team. Felton is variously ranked by some of the "big" gurus like Clark Francis and Bob Gibbons as among the top one or two guards in the country here at the camp, but unlike Roberson, he seems to think that he's not the only guy on his team.

Marcus Williams (6'-2" Jr. PG/SG)--Marcus is one of the best combo guards on the West Coast, but on the East Coast, he's been in the same lineup with Anthony Roberson, and it's been horrible. We realize that Roberson is a really big-deal guy, the lead guard for the powerful Michigan Hurricanes, and we know that saying this will not earn us any friends among Chris Grier's crew (and by the way, we really like them as a team), but Roberson is playing just awful, awful basketball. He's been selfish, almost to the point of boorishness, and thankfully he doesn't have to impress any college coaches any longer because he's only impressing himself by jacking up the ball just about every single time he touches it. In fact about the only time he passes is when he doesn't have his own clean shot. . . And Marcus has been the main victim from what we've seen. . . He rarely touched the ball the first day and as a result, his ppg and assists were pretty low, but his easy and smooth style is not going unnoticed, and we've talked to several other scouts and coaches and they have been impressed. When he's on the floor with Keion Kindred and Derek Stockalper (who is also on the same team), they are a very productive unit, and Marcus is making good decisions. We haven't seen him shooting his trademark 30' shots, but then he's really valuing his touches a bit more than normal here.

Derek Stockalper (6'-4" Sr. G/F)-- We vaguely remember putting Derek among the combo guards, but we'll have to move him to the wing forwards when we get a chance. Derek is playing absolutely spectacular here, and last night he had the dunk of the camp, a thunderous driving tomahawk dunk which had people murmuring for at least an hour afterward. He's scoring off slashes and drives to the basket and in transition and looking really good.

We will finish up this report on the rest of the California players later tonight. In the meantime, we've got to get back to the gym.