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The most scintillating performance of the afternoon portion of the playoffs at the fall session of the famed IS8 basketball tournament this past Saturday October 23 was a 45 point performance in the face of good defense by Chris Thomas for Princeton Day against the Playaz Juniors. Thomas is considered a top 5 player nationally in the class of 2013. Against the fully geared up defense of the Playaz he went radar with his jumper and also faced up defenders and rock and rolled for some one on one to hoop in tough traffic with amazing spin moves and a deft shooting touch. At the end of the close game, which the Princeton Day one in the single elimination play off game, at lost of the attention on the court shifted to Thomas due to his constant scoring and he still came through big time as the defense looked to hold. In the match up between Team Connecticut and the Old School Cavs, the Cavs took an early lead and held it well behind excellent play including a lot of medium range scoring from Jalen Cannon, 6’6 wing who consistently pirated to the basket and tuned Team Connecticut for 26 points while actually checking dynamo Drummond at times. 7’1 All World Andre Drummond was on hand for Team C and he was looking good in running the court like a deer, hitting the turnaround J, and high rolling slamming from all directions and sometimes off coast to coast drives. He is silky smooth to boot. When called for a questionable foul on defense where he just held his hands straight up in the air, He said to the ref, “ I’m kinda tall.” Despite this the Cavs had the ball on their end of the court with a 1 point lead with 5 seconds to go. The in-bounds pass went all the way to the Connecticut end of the floor and when the pass was fumbled they just picked it up and hit a short J for the win. Has the pass been kept in the front-court it is doubtful that even with an exchange there would have been enough time to get a decent shot off. In a later game the Sean Bell All Stars garnered 23 points from Baltimore’s finest Nick Faust in running past the Long Island Lightening, Faust, a big 6’6 guard who may be still growing and is highly touted while gearing to make his college choice this week. He combines drives with deep jumpers and made some nice passes in the interior in bringing nice floor vision to his game. The Lightening were certainly that with respect to their slick handling skills but lack a good interior presence on defense and Sean Bell controlled the offensive glass and Danny C was especially impressive with 28 points. In the match up between Bunky Reid and Team Buckets, Bunky as a team was shooting so well from outside it was ludicrous. Huntington Park was very late for the game against Harborfield high and they start ed the game because of this in the second quarter with Harborfield given a 16-0 lead. It looked like with their powerful interior play they would come all the way back and got with about 6 points but Harborfield surged late shooting as well as they looked in warm-ups and tightening up the defense a bit. As far as individual performances, Reggie Cameron had 26 points for the Playaz Jr.’s against Princeton day and at 6’6 with a big build, he really just shot beautifully from deep and looked like a quintessential European style pure shooter.
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