Future Arizona Wildcats Show Us Why Ball Is Life
The Game – Stanley Johnson helped coach Team Future
Ballislife Photo by Shereen Rayan 05/02/15
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Stanley Johnson and Kelly Oubre helped coach the Orange team or Team Future, their Head Coach was Dinos Trigonis who coaches the AAU Belmont Shore team in Southern California. Trigonis is also the director of the well-known Pangos All-American Camp.
The video below gives you a little taste of Stanley and his coaching style, I have to be honest, he was in those refs faces for the entire second half of the game! He has learned something from his Coach Sean Miller, he didn’t give up as a coach even when his team was down by 20+ points. Stanley not only had the referee’s number, he had the number of the players on the other teams as well and often enjoyed jawing at the players on Team Elite. It seemed to work actually because Team Future was coming back.
Deep into the second half of the game, Team Future started to make a run, bringing the score to 107 – 107 at one point. The game got really competitive, everyone took it very seriously which was a stark contrast to the first half of the game.
Ballislife Photo by Shereen Rayan 05/02/15
On the other side of the court was the Gray team or Team Elite who included our future Wildcats. Team Elite was coaching by a famous Southern California AAU Coach Etop Udo-Ema, founder of the famed Compton Magic AAU program. Coach Udo-Ema had help, his assistant coaches were former UCLA players Kevon Looney and Norman Powell both projected as high NBA Draft picks.
Both U of A Commit T.J. Leaf and Recruit recently offered by Sean Miller, Jalen Hill both play for Udo-Ema’s Compton Magic team. This man has a lot of charisma, and meeting him for the first time yesterday, it was obvious why he is such a successful coach.
The Long Beach City College gym sure was hot and muggy but that didn’t bother anyone, we all were glued to the game.After tying the game at 107, Team Elite pulled away with 9.7 seconds left and ended up beating Stanley’s Team Future (with the future Kentucky Wildcats), 113-110.
Here is a taste of teams getting ready for the last 9.7 seconds of the game after a time out for Team Future, who do you think that they were going to go to for the final shot? Hmm, maybe their future Kentucky Wildcat who just won a three-point contest?
So just as scripted, the play was set up for Briscoe who missed a three-pointer followed by a second attempt by future Beaver Stephen Thompson Jr. leaving the score at Team Elite 113- Team Future 110. MVP honors went to Thon Maker who seemed to have a lot of fun playing and dunking on these other high school seniors.
In other news, yesterday, Gabe Encinas of AZDesertSwarm.com announced that there has been some movement in rankings of our incoming Arizona Wildcats class: “New overall rankings for Arizona’s incoming recruiting class #6 Allonzo Trier, #12 Ray Smith, #39 Chance Comanche, #49 Justin Simon.” After what we witnessed yesterday I would raise these players rankings, but I am obviously partial.
I am getting excited for next season and I will not miss this Ball is Life showcase next year, because it’s just pure fun!
Beardown Justin, Chance and Stanely! Thanks for showing us how fun basketball can be.