SHEN SUMMER LEAGUE RECAP, 2007
Less than a month now before the beginning of high school hoop tryouts and season opening workouts, I thought I’d look back quickly and mention what I saw about three months ago in local indoor summer ball. Outdoor hoop, such as down in Albany’s Hoffman Park League, I did NOT see, so I can’t comment on what might’ve happened there. But the Shen Summer League, held throughout the month of July on the sprawling Clifton Park campus, I’ve seen during the past two year’s worth of organized competition that gives participants, sanctioned refs, and a few interested spectators a taste of what’s to come, roughly four or five months before the actual hoop season starts.
Last year (2006) I saw Talor Battle play for Maginn and Jimmer Fredette play for Glens Falls in selected games in this league, when their AAU schedule allowed. But the CCHS team I follow and keep score for was usually missing their top two players, Devin Grimes and Jordan Gettings, as they were taking part in the Empire State Games at roughly the same time. This year Gettings and Grimes made all the games and team turnout was more consistent, so the team did much better than in the previous year’s league. A pre-cursor to a good season? Perhaps, but results in this league can be, and were, somewhat skewed on a team basis, depending on how many of the actual top varsity players are available to play in a given week. Still, for those who can attend and get some run, it’s the best off-season chance to go up against a semblance of other Section 2 teams, and the best, most organized competition that can be arranged in the middle of summer. For fanatic fans, parents, players, and coaches who love hoop, for whom the off-season is six months too long, it’s a great substitute for the real thing.
The format is that each team in the league plays double-headers on Wednesday nights each week in July, roughly 6, 7, and 8 pm starts. Sometimes they play back-to-back; sometimes there is a game in-between. The courts are side-to-side with a net screen in between, so no three-point lines are in effect on the courts where no arc exists. Only one ref is allotted to each game, and no individual fouls are kept, only team totals. Two twenty minute running halves are loosely kept, with stop time only in the last two minutes of each half. It is controlled-chaos scrimmage, in effect, with not every call getting made, and often physical play involved, like street ball. But it’s better comp than pickup ball at your favorite Y.
WHO WAS IN, WHO WAS OUT….
Last year’s league encompassed 8 teams; in 2007 there were 10.
In 2006, the teams were:
LaSalle Institute (Troy)
Bishop Maginn (Albany)
Catholic Central (Troy)
Shenendehowa (Clifton Park)
Schenectady High
Glens Falls High
Scotia-Glenville High
Queensbury High
This past season, the two added were:
Saratoga Springs High
Albany Academy
That meant there were four teams from the Big 10, three from the Foothills Council, two from the Suburban Council, and one from the Colonial Council, a pretty good representative mix of high school ball in Section 2. Six of the teams were “AA”; the other four were “A” schools, and there were no B or C schools involved.
With eight games per team, each team played all but one of the others. I never found out if the results were posted anywhere, and the scores were kept a bit haphazardly compared to the formality of the regular season, but the flow of the games gave people a pretty good idea of who was good, and which teams were hurting a bit. Most of the teams that were losing close games would point to the fact that they were missing one or more of their stars (i.e. Jordan Stevens for Saratoga, Josh Hooper & Kellen Henderson for Queensbury, and Taron Buie for Bishop Maginn), and that’s what I mean by skewed results.
Another reason why summer results can be skewed or confusing is that school rosters are NOT definitively set yet. Last year’s Summer League, for example, was dominated by LaSalle, who featured powerful 6’6” athlete Alec Field, who teamed up with similarly-sized Stephen Baker to crush most teams on the boards. They were supplemented by a pony-tailed guard who was under 6’ tall but could dunk easily, and played in the open-court with flair. Trouble was, this guard-- Donovan Johnson--who had been playing down at Hudson High the previous year, ended up at Troy High and not at LaSalle during the school year. And Alec Field was ineligible for his varsity campaign, based on age rules, so that his dominance in summer ball was his last hurrah in high school, so to speak. Steve Baker was not as powerful a force on his own, as it turned out. LaSalle still had a decent year in Varsity Hoop, but never contended with CBA or Maginn to the extent I thought they might.
When Shen was beating a Jordan-less Saratoga team by about 6 points early in the month in a closely fought game, it seemed they had a host of sophs on the floor, but they clearly brought in some beefier upper classmen when they showed up to give CCHS their only loss in the league a week later.
That game was interesting. Shen’s Varsity Hoop Coach was watching from the endline as his team was getting beat early on by the fast-breaking style and free-wheeling hustle of Catholic High. In fact it was the unexpected burst of 5’10” thunderbolt guard (and football player) Zay’quan DuPree, getting rebounds and putbacks in the lane and hip tossing one or two of the Shen kids with whirling moves in traffic that really set off the Shen Coach. He shouted for the Summer Coach to call a time-out and then reamed his team-to-be like it was a critical test in a mid-winter tournament. Within earshot of the scoring table and the opponent’s bench he told the Green team that they were playing like a bunch of “wussies” (I paraphrase here) and getting intimidated by a Big 10 team, living up to the Suburban Council’s perennial paranoia against the more “urban” squads. He read them the riot act like he was Bobby Cimmino of Mount Vernon, instructing them on how to fight back, which I must admit, they proceeded to do.
The fact that Zay’quan DuPree weighs about 160 lbs. and was accused indirectly of “bullying” the mostly-burly Shen team was a bit comical to me. Shen had a tall left-handed muscle man who out-weighed anyone on the CCHS frontline by about forty pounds, and he did a lot of the damage for the rest of the game. Then there was a thin
spot-up shooter who was getting open for threes over and over again, and he didn’t seem to miss that day—I didn’t get his name. Someone said he was only a soph but the older guys on his team seemed to have no trouble finding him for open shots—they knew who he was. Shen shared the ball and banged the boards, and held off a furious CCHS rally after taking a double-figure lead, and won a close game.
I know that Shenendehowa has varsity returnees like Tom Kukuk, Kaelin Loose, Brady Farkas, and Doug Mulvaney, as well as JV move-up, soph Matt Miner ready to step in for some serious minutes. But now I hear they also have a transfer from Texas playing varsity football as a soph who will also be a force, so their prospects are good in the Suburban this year, even with tough tests waiting for them from Saratoga, Shaker, and Guilderland.
Bishop Maginn’s entry in the summer league was lacking their future/present star, sophomore Taron Buie, who was leading his 15U City Rocks team to an 11th place finish nationally at about the same time this league took place. They were crushing most teams in this league even without him, but in the first week, Catholic High gave them a nasty tussle, holding a 16 point lead over Maginn at one point late in the first half—that is, over the numerous and talented returnees from last year’s Sectional AA Champs, who played Mount Vernon almost even in the State Title Game. Sure, they were without the graduated starters Talor Battle and 6’4” Jaluan Taylor, plus bench depth from Malcolm Chandler and Jesse Smith, but everyone else of note who finished the season with them was there, other than T. Buie. Like Shen, they have a lot of depth at that school, and theirs is more athletic, with a league-leading JV crop kicking up several good players to the varsity level: Raja Johnson, T.J. Jefferson, and Chris Jeffers among them. Their regular season starters will likely include shooter Terron Victoria, lanky center Shimeek Johnson, strong inside man James Torres, and savvy point guard Bunduka Kargbo (a star quarterback as well), to go with prolific scorer Buie. If Torres doesn’t start, Antonio Davis might. They would certainly, I think, have to be favorites to repeat as Big 10 Champs, though it all depends on whether the personalities gel. My guess is that their press along with their up-tempo style will still be enough to intimidate most teams they face in the upcoming winter campaign. Coach Rick Hurley got a taste of big-time success last season, and I’m sure will be looking to repeat it.
But I was impressed with the composure shown by our team from CCHS, led by two veteran seniors: guard Jordan Gettings, and mobile center Devin Grimes, plus six other experienced varsity players. Other frontline players likely to start will be juniors Denzel Paschal (in his third year of varsity comp) and Gerard Jacques (known simply as “G” at school), plus 6’2” senior Chris Bouchard, also in his third year of Big 10 varsity ball. The aforementioned Zay’Quan DuPree will likely be first back-up at guard with speed and tenacious D, while junior Andrew Clement and senior Jon Seleman will provide extra strength inside, and mid-range shooting. Two shooters likely to move up from JV will be Robby Diamond, a junior from Watervliet, and Miles Perras, a versatile soph from Saratoga (must admit, I’ve been following this kid’s career for years). Eight of these ten were present for most of the games of the summer league (Clements and Seleman being down with leg injuries), and showed better cohesion than the previous summer’s squad, when attendance by the older players was more spotty, due to AAU, Empire Games, and/or baseball commitments. Other than a close loss to Shen, and a strangely-ended tie with Maginn (Gettings stole the ball and scored to end a knotted game, but the basket was waved off as being after the clock ran out, and the coaches both agreed to end it there…), CCHS won all six of their other games, with Schenectady being the only close one. Taking their lumps for a couple of years in Big 10 wars has only made this bunch tougher and more determined. With the two top returning scorers in the league—Grimes and Gettings-- more will be expected in terms of competitiveness than in prior recent years. What I found interesting in summer league was that they each found ways to score that might’ve been different than expected—Gettings with more tip-ins than you might expect from a 6-foot point guard, and 6’5” Grimes with pull-up J’s and the occasional 3. Coach Blain Goverski has a style that keeps the team calm and confident in crisis situations and I look forward to seeing how he handles this season.
Schenectady has an assemblage of potentially dynamite talent as well. Their individual skills didn’t seem to translate to team cohesion, but I expect that Mark Sausville will teach them to overcome that in the coming season. Guys like juniors Mark Blair and Chris Lewis, senior Terrence Blanchard, and sophs Reece Jackson and JV star Tony Lewis will be back as a core group, and they seemed to have some strong athletes ready to help out, including the powerful younger brother of Rayshaun Freeman, whom I wrote about briefly before. From seeing Miles play against their 15U team this summer, I know they have some pending talent there ready to move up, including two brothers with the last name of Millinghaus—watch out for their ascension. This team is always capable of surprises, and will be a sleeper in the Big 10 this year.
LaSalle is the league team returning perhaps the most varsity players, as they featured 9 juniors on their roster last year. They have size in seniors Guy Robichaud, Jack Murray, and Dan Syrotynski, plus speed and shooting at guard and wing in guys like Khaliq Gross, Jared Henkel, Josh House, Evan Cavanaugh, Jon Joyner and Josh Brown. There is a kid named Will Reutemann moving up from JV who has great post skills, while Mike Murray and Marquis Campbell (both with City Rocks experience) may eventually play a role for the Cadets under Coach Sean Brown as well. They have depth and lots of scoring options and should prove to be in the mix.
These four teams from the Big 10 are those from the Summer League I studied most closely and knew best—they will have to contend, obviously, with some teams who were NOT present in the Shen Summer Runs— 5 more solid teams including the famous CBA Brothers, the Bishop Gibbons Golden Knights, the Amsterdam Rugged Rams, the Albany Falcons, and the Troy Flying Horses. All of these teams have potent returning forces, which I will report on first hand this winter. But I’ll confine this article to the teams I saw in the Summer League.
Other good Suburban Council “AA” teams that would’ve been interesting to see in summer competition would be: the Guilderland Dutchmen, the Shaker Blue Bison, and especially the Colonie Garnet Raiders, who I think will be one of the top teams in all of Section 2, and may be best equipped to compete with Big 10 teams at the moment, and in the year-end Sectional Tournament.
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Saratoga Springs has among the fewest returning varsity guys from a senior-laden team that made it to the AA Semis in Glens Falls last March. Suburban Council Player of the Year as a soph Jordan Stevens happens to be one of them, however. Among the returning seniors, 6’1” leaper and natural scorer Ryan James will be joined by fellow senior Mike McCarthy, a great shooter in AAU competition, in the backcourt to complement the abundant points put up by Jordan. James Tucker is a wide-shouldered 6’5” center moving up from JV to give ‘Toga a presence in the middle like they haven’t had in a few years, giving Stevens some help on the boards and on defense. An athletic 6’2” junior forward named Alex King might be, I think, a likely fifth starter, based on what I’ve heard of skills he’s displayed at the local Y and at Open Gyms. I’ve heard that there were a couple of other serious senior players doing well who will go out for the team, but weren’t involved in Summer Ball. As with most schools, whoever gets invited to these off-season workouts obviously has the inside track to varsity positions, barring academic or behavioral setbacks.
Among those who I heard were participating in the Shen League for Saratoga were juniors Liam Stegman, Brian Doherty, Jon Keehn, & Shaq Thornton, senior Don Allen, sophs Anthony Luciano & Ian Ludde, and precocious freshman Matt Petruccione—who was driving and banging and scoring well enough that he was rumored to be contending for a starting slot on varsity this year. Even though Saratoga played on parallel courts to our games at times, I never saw more than a minute of their contests while keeping score or time for CCHS. Unfortunately, they were, I believe, the only team of the other 9 our team didn’t get to play against, which would’ve been an interesting test if all the best players from both teams were there. Perhaps there’s a tournament date down the line which will allow that match-up to occur.
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Glens Falls High has a devastatingly tough act to follow. Even if Jimmer Fredette was the only important piece to try to replace, it would be tough, but they also graduated several other key players—Denny Wilhelm, Alec Conover, Taylor Luczak, Robby Eddy, Nick Hildreth and to a lesser extent John Taft and Lawson Prunty—who were key cogs in the Indians’ run to the Finals of Class A’s State Championship in March of 2007. Having seen that team play a lot during their 3-year run of excellence, I only recognized a few names among those that performed in the subsequent summer league. Eric Allen was the most prominent and talented of those, presumably much improved from playing understudy to Fredette in practice for a couple of years, now getting his chance to shine as a senior. He shot and handled the ball well, and some of his up-and-under moves and fakes were reminiscent of Jimmer’s. Jared Woodell and Harrison Barton will be back for GF, and they had some other athletic rebounders and inside players who must have either transferred or come up from JV. One or two of them seemed quite contentious during the game they played against CCHS, and I would think there will be more discipline employed when they are under the gaze of accomplished Varsity Coach Tony Hammel. The Big 10 Players they were going against, had seen much nastier competition in the urban ball of the Capital District than a summer league team from up north could bring, and in the end, Catholic Central blew them out at Shen.
Albany Academy started and finished with similar verbal bravado, at least involving one of their stars. Early on they had the lead, and were woofing, obviously looking for the notoriety of beating a good Big 10 team. Then CCHS started playing some defense after a good chewing out by summer coach Mike Grimes, and the tide turned. Jamel Fields showed fire on numerous drives to the hole that had me thinking back to Dean Meminger (of Marquette, and the Knicks) in the late ‘70’s—showing a refusal to be stopped as he twisted and spun his way to the goal. But on the night in question his shooting percentage was not that great, and there was a reluctance on his part to pass to the open man. Shavar Fields played well in the middle, hitting a couple of mid-range jumpers—he is still only a soph this year. Tyler Foster drilled a couple of threes early, and then got few shots off after that, but he has a sweet stroke, and as a junior should get more minutes than last year. Jimmer Bennett has played point for two years on the varsity level, and is a good distributor, albeit unspectacular, and not prone to scoring much. Omar McGill is an energetic defender, and Phil Cushing is a wiry and competent baseline forward who can finish. But these last three guys I just mentioned are likely to be pushed aside to some extent by newcomers to the Academy program.
Even if they played with just those five, they’d likely dominate the Colonial Council in local play. But new Coach Brian Fruscio, who led LaSalle Academy to the Section 2 “AA” title in 2002, has bigger ambitions. Word is that their fall/winter team will include transfer Chris Pelcher, a 6’7” junior who has huge upside potential (and who leaves a hole in the middle that Columbia High will have a hard time filling). They also are likely gaining two more sophomores who have been stalwarts on the City Rocks 15U Team in prior years—cagey guard Kyle Callanan (transferred from Mt. Anthony of Vermont) and a European wunderkind named David Benocs of Hungary. Having seen each of these new imports in AAU ball, I can tell you that—if all of the above are eligible, uninjured, and compatible-- they might cannibalize all local competition in the A Division in an even bigger way than Glens Falls did last year. They may also give State Champs Peekskill a hell of a battle in their home-&-home series this year. A front line of Shavar Fields, David Benocs, and Chris Pelcher would be scary to all but the most elite teams in the area, averaging about 6’7” across. Add shooters like Foster and Callanan to go with the slashing penetration of Jamel Fields (known as “Buddha” since he was a youngster), and Fruscio’s team will be hard to stop: this year, next year, and the year after that.
In short, they are likely to look a lot better during the winter campaign than they did in the summer league. They shouldn’t have to show as much attitude once they get their true swagger going.
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Scotia-Glenville is a team that will likely be effective and competitive in the Foothills Council, but was a bit overmatched in this league. One of their good senior big men, Wes Shapiro, suffered a knee or leg injury and didn’t finish the game they played against CCHS. And I asked one of their assistant coaches where the 3-point shooter Brett Evenson was—having read about him on the Times-Union stats page for the past two years. I was told he had given up hoop altogether and was focusing on football—what a waste, I thought.
They had a clever point guard who I presume was Jeff Stopera, a senior this year. There were a few 5’11” guys who could shoot and pass but I saw very little size and strength there to help their only “big”—6’9” Jimmy Janson—so they better hope that the Shapiro kid is ready to go for the winter season.
Queensbury is in the ambivalent position of playing in the Foothils Council during the league season, but then having to compete in the “AA” Sectionals at Tournament time, based on the sprawling size of the school. Like Scotia, they were missing at least two key players, and had a lot of shorter guys who could shoot but seemed a bit slow and over-matched in a more urban game. Their two best returning players, who competed for the Adirondack squad in the Empire State Games, would be Josh Hooper and Kellen Henderson—but they weren’t there in summer ball for the games I saw. Truthfully, I didn’t notice anyone with any size who stood out for Q’bury, though a scrappy guard named Sam Gleason, who we knew from a previous year of AAU ball in Wilton, performed well in the absence of the senior star guards.
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My first-hand summary of the Summer League was that itwas better for our guys to be playing in a sweltering indoor gym with no A/C than not to be playing at all, or to be playing outside on pavement, subject to changeable weather. At least there were official, sanctioned refs, hardwood courts (without puddles), 10-foot rims that weren’t bent from dunking, hoops that weren’t rusty and actually had nets, and semi-organized game situations. It was a chance to see would-be teammates attempt to gel in the off-season, and for some of the coaches who showed up to watch to see what they might have coming back. But that was back in July, and now we are close to the November start of the ’07-’08 High School Season.
Copyright Wayne Perras 2007
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Page Posted Wednesday, October 17, 2007