It was a busy weekend of basketball. Whitney Young v. Lincoln Park and DePaul Prep v. Providence on Friday night. Then the Team Rose Shootout on Saturday and Sunday.
I love the Team Rose Shootout. It has a real gym-rat feel. The Chicago Elite Classic is fancy. Wintrust has fabulous light. But for pure basketball pleasure, the Team Rose Shootout is it. So many knowledgeable people to talk to. So many good players and good teams. Had some blowouts but all well played games.
Of the 900 games (14 actually), I got to see six. I really wanted to see Bloom and Orr, neither of whom I had not seen yet this year. Bloom is something—big and athletic. Well deserving of their #1 status. Orr looked really good. Evanston was just too good for the Spartans. The Wildkits handled Orr’s pressure. Not many others could. Orr will be there for the CPS championships.
I got to see Leo in advance of the Friday’s Chicago Catholic League game against DePaul Prep. And St. Laurence too. I like to see as many Chicago Catholic League teams as I can. I still haven’t seen Fenwick. It will be strange to see St. Joe’s without Gene Pingatore.
Notre Dame amazed me with a huge win over an extremely talented Bogan Begals squad. I still don’t know how they did that. Troy D’Amico played two positions at once. He was bringing the ball over the time line and then passing it to himself under the basket to score.
Okay, I know everybody contributed—Louis Lesmond, Jason Bergstrom, Jimmy Murphy, Frank Lynch and Mac Ross all made it happen without Anthony Sayles.
And the inspired coaching from Kevin Clancy and Shay Boyle. They had the Dons ready and did not fold under the intense pressure from Bogan. It was an interesting move to put D’Amico at point guard after the rash of turnovers. And the murderer’s row schedule too. As a St. Viator grad, I am not one to say nice things about the Notre Dame Dons if I can help it. But I have to take my St. Viator baseball cap off to them. It was very gutsy to put this schedule together and even more impressive to go out and back it up with high quality wins.
I couldn’t speed a lot of time there on Saturday so I missed OPRF and Stevenson. I will get to see Stevenson at the Hinsdale Holiday Classic coming up.
Michael O’Brien wrote in the paper today (or maybe it was Twitter) that the season is one quarter over. It seems like it just started to me. It has been very enjoyable so far.
Well, on to the Christmas tournaments.
Photos from:
Tinley Park v. Schaumburg
Bloom v. St. Laurence
Leo v. Kenwood
Notre Dame v. Bogan
Orr v. Evanston
