Throwdown of the Day 4-1-08

Throwdown Posted from Takkle.com

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Top ranked St. Anthony's finishes season undeafeated with Tournament of Champions win

Congratulations to St. Anthony’s of Jersey City for completing its season undefeated with a 69-36 win over Science Park High to with the Jersey State Tournament of Champions. McDonald’s All-American guard Mike Rosario led the Friars with 21 points, and guard Tyshawn Taylor went 7-for-7 from the floor with 17 points. Rosario and Taylor will next face off in the Big East as Rosario heads to Rutgers and Taylor will play at Marquette.

"We made some adjustments at halftime," said St. Anthony’s coach Bob Hurley, who is on the ballot for the Naismith Hall of Fame this year. "We had a few players out of synch and towards the end of the half we had an ineffective lineup on the floor. In the second half, we added more defensive pressure, threw a few zones at them to force them to shoot from the perimeter."

The Friars featured six seniors who have signed to play for Division I schools on their roster this season, but their best player, junior forward Dominic Cheek, will be back next year.

- St. Thomas More guard Devin Ebanks was in attendance at the Big 10 tournament this past weekend watching Indiana, the school he signed with this past summer, fall to Minnesota in the tournament quarterfinals. Ebanks told the Indiana Daily Student that his recruitment was still up in the air, and he was expected to meet with officials from the Indiana athletic department this week.

"I don't know right now," Ebanks told the paper. "Right now we have to meet with (IU Athletic Director) Rick Greenspan tonight or probably (Saturday), but we haven't decided yet. I will try to make a decision after the Big Ten Tournament."

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Texas Sized Showdown: Duncanville vs North Crowley High

Tonight’s Lone Star semifinal match-up between North Crowley High and Duncanville will match-up the two best teams in Texas – in the regional semifinals.

"This is the match-up everybody's wanted since the beginning of the year," said Duncanville senior forward Shawn Williams told the Dallas Morning News. "It should have been a championship, but for both teams, every game in the playoffs is a championship game."

Duncanville is high school basketball royalty in Texas. The team is 35-1 this season, with the only loss coming against Oak Hill Academy back in December. Before that loss, Duncanville had won 53 consecutive games, including a 39-0 season last year that ended with a state title and a mythic national championship.

Williams is one of the top juniors in the country and will be one of the most sought after prizes in next year’s recruiting season. Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisville and Baylor have all expressed interest in the 6-7 scorer.

But North Crowley (34-1) is far from a patsy. Crowley is led by McDonald’s All-American guard Willie Warren, who is headed to Oklahoma next year. Joining him in Norman will be senior and best friend T.J. Franklin, who was invited to walk-on at OU by coach Jeff Capel. P.J. Colley and Tony McGilveary are both solid players, and the Panthers should have a lot of confidence entering tonight’s game. During the fall preseason, North Crowley defeated Duncanville without Warren, who was at Oak Hill Academy before transferring back to North Crowley in October.

"They beat us then, but I think they still feel like they have something to prove," Williams said. "I'm expecting them to come out and play us hard, but we'll be ready."

"We're playing for a state championship. Not too many people can say they're a state champion," Warren said. "Our team wants this bad, and we want to get it for Coach [Tommy] Brakel. If I could give up the McDonald's game for state, I would."

Should be a fun one tonight.

- Last Sunday Thurgood Marshall Academy defeated Farragut Academy to win the Chicago Public League championship. The win gave the Commandos their first city championship since 1991, when a guard by the name of Arthur Agee led Marshall downstate. If the name sounds familiar, that would be because Agee was one of the two high school players featured in the 1994 documentary “Hoop Dreams,” and the Commandos city title was one of the highlights of the movie. If you haven’t seen the movie, you’re truly missing out.

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Devin Ebanks future at Indiana: Up in the air

According to published reports, highly-touted senior shooting guard Devin Ebanks had a provision in his letter of intent that would allow him to decommit from Indiana in the event that now-former head coach Kelvin Sampson were fired or resigned. With Sampson now out of Bloomington, Ebanks may decide to take his talents elsewhere.

"I did have something in place that allows me to be released if Coach Sampson wasn't there," Ebanks told Fox Sports’ Jeff Goodman. "I'm going to use that to explore other options and I still want to wait and see who Indiana hires full-time, but I am going to talk things over with my mother and my coaches and go from there."

IU Interim coach Dan Dakich is not considered to be a serious candidate for the full-time gig, so the first priority for the next head man in Bloomington will be convincing Ebanks to honor his commitment and also reassuring the other recruits Sampson landed to make a go of it at IU. Stay tuned on this one.

- Playoff time around the country is always bittersweet as players throughout the nation will play their last games for their high school squads. USC-bound forward Demar DeRozen, the number 6 ranked player in the country according to TAKKLE.com/Sports Illustrated, scored 25 points in his last game for Compton High, as the Tarbabes fell to Santa Margherita High School in the CIF quarterfinals. Santa Margherita got 27 points from forward Klay Thompson, who will see DeRozan next year in the Pac-10, as Thompson will play in Pullman for Washington State next year.

- In other playoff news, McDonald’s All-American Kemba Walker and Rice High of Manhattan topped St. Raymond’s of the Bronx 78-59 in Saturday's New York Archdiocesan title match. Next up for both teams: the full city Catholic League playoffs.

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McDonald's All-American Team is Named: Mike Rosario is a surprise pick

The McDonald’s All-American teams were announced this week, and there were a few surprises.

As expected, American Christian guard Tyreke Evans and St. Benedict’s forward Samardo Samuels will headline the East team in Milwaukee. But the biggest surprise on the team had to be St. Anthony’s guard Mike Rosario. This is a major coup for Rutgers, who signed the 6-0 guard, as Fred Hill, who was hired to replace the departed Gary Watters based on his skill as a recruiter, can now say that he has brought a McDonald’s All-American to Piscataway. But Rosario’s inclusion, despite the fact that he has played extraordinarily well this season, is somewhat odd being that he isn’t even the best player on his team. That distinction belongs to junior forward Dominic Cheek, who will be a prime candidate for next year’s squad. St. Anthony’s will take on Evans and American Christian tonight at St. Peter’s College in Jersey City.

- As for the West squad, it looks like Brandon Jennings and Willie Warren will finally get a chance to team up in the backcourt. Warren, of North Crowley High in Fort Worth, was supposed to be Jennings’ backcourt mate at Oak Hill Academy this year. But Warren, an Oklahoma signee transferred back to North Crowley this fall, where he has led the Panthers to a 31-1 mark. Jennings exploded for 63 points last week in a win over Bonner. What a duo they would have made.

- In a blockbuster playoff match-up in Florida, sophomore wunderkind Brandon Knight led Pine Crest to a 90-76 win over Kenny Boynton and American Heritage in the state regional semifinals. “Knight is a special player,” American Heritage coach Danny Herz said. “We haven’t had a player like that around these parts for quite some time."

- American Christian junior guard Lamont Jones, who was included on TAKKLE’s first-team All-PrimeTime Shootout squad after his blistering performances against Rancocas Valley and South Kent, told the New York Daily News that he is decomitting from Louisville and that his recruitment is once again open. Jones, who transferred to ACS from Rice High in Manhattan, should be a hot commodity on the summer circuit.

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