82Cards

Jeremiah Tisdale seems like a nice kid from my limited interaction with him. I really hate to hear that he is injured. I hope he recovers quickly and fully. Does anyone know what his college offers are? I usually look to Verbal Commits | Basketball Recruiting, Offers, Commits, Rankings for this kind of information, but can't find him listed anywhere. Also, I don't recall ever seeing anything come across my twitter timeline about him and his recruiting.

You can add Darius Gibson to the Lexington pipeline as well. The former Tates Creek player will play for Samford this year after spending two years at Barton Community College and he may well be Samford's best player this season.

Congrats to Matt Rose on his commitment to Samford University. He keeps getting better and better each time he takes the court and I'm looking for him to have a breakout season this winter for Lexington Christian. As he is young for his grade, he may still have a little more growing to do as well. As for the Travelers, their top 8 players from this past summer include 5 D1 commits, Jalen Perry from Ballard who is a D1 talent but not yet committed anywhere, and 2 from class of 2016 (Braxton Beverly, Carson Williams) who will certainly be D1 commits next year.

Just to set the record straight, Shon Wright never actually played for the Travelers. He was invited to play on the 16 year old Travelers team (which is NOT the EYBL), but wasn't able to play due to injury. He was never associated with the 17 year old Traveler's EYBL team in any manner. Nevertheless, he is a great kid and very talented basketball player. I feel really sorry for him that he has had to battle these injuries.

1. Henry Clay 2. Scott County 3. Lexington Christian 4. Lexington Catholic 5. Dunbar 6. Lafayette My preseason 11th Region top 6 FWIW. These teams are so close together, I'm not sure you can break them into tiers.

Does anyone know the status of Shon Wright? Is he healthy and does he intend to play this year?

I looked up the stats for Ray Spaulding and Drew McDonald during this past EYBL regular season on D1 Circuit - Nike EYBL Coverage. Although this is not both players guarding each other in a Trinity/NewCath game, it is still a good and fair comparison of the two players because they were playing against the same level of competition. Although Ray only played six games for the Travelers, that is still a pretty good sample size. Look at the numbers and decide for yourselves: 19.9 Minutes Per Game 19.5 10.2 Points Per Game 8.5 17 High Game 11 5.7 Rebounds Per Game 4.2 .492 Field Goal % .512 .467 3-Point % .125 .750 Free Throw % .529 0.5 Assists Per Game 1.8 1.0 Turnovers Per Game 1.3 0.3 Steals Per Game 0.5 0.8 Blocks Per Game 1.0 1.8 Fouls Per Game 1.8 By the way, the stats on the left are for Drew McDonald and the ones on the right are for Ray Spaulding. For me, this comes down to what I always hear about these two players. Drew McDonald produces while Ray Spaulding has potential.

I thought the Travelers played well as a "team" in the Peach Jam and this was further confirmed when I looked up the scoring stats online. Although Cameron Justice was by far the leading scorer, I think it is remarkable how evenly the other six players contributed to the effort. Here are the points per game averages for the 5 games of the Peach Jam: 16.2 Cameron Justice 8.8 Beetle Bolden 8.4 Drew McDonald 8.4 Dwayne Sutton 8.0 Braxton Beverly 7.8 Matt Rose 6.8 Jalen Perry

To sum up the Peach Jam, there are 40 teams in the EYBL and the top 24 during the regular season advance to the Peach Jam. The 24 teams in the Peach Jam are then divided into four pools of six teams each for pool play. The top two teams from each pool advance to the 8-team bracket play to determine the champion. The semi-finals and finals are on ESPNU today. The Travelers finished in a 4-way tie for 1st place in their pool with all teams having a 3-2 record. Apparently the method for breaking ties was not set forth in writing in advance which led to the confusion as to which teams would advance (maybe Nike likes it that way so that they have the flexibility to advance teams with the bigger stars). Anyway, the method first announced for breaking ties was by point differential (instead of head-to-head or some other method), but then there was confusion as to whether the point differential applied to all pool play games or just the games played between the teams that were tied. If I did the math correctly, the point differential using all five pool play games would have advanced the Kentucky Travelers and Team Final to bracket play. The results would have been: Kentucky Travelers +14 Team Final +8 Oakland Soldiers +3 Houston Hoops +1 Nike decided, however, to use the point differential only for the games played among the tied teams, which substantially juggled the results and ended up advancing the Oakland Soldiers and Houston Hoops to bracket play. By that method, the point differentials were: Oakland Soldiers +10 Houston Hoops +3 Team Final -3 Kentucky Travelers -10 Obviously, the buzzer-beater loss to Houston Hoops was heartbreaking as it cost the Travelers the chance to advance, because if they had won that game they would have been the only team in their pool with a 4-1 record and would have been alone in 1st place. Nevertheless, the Travelers represented Kentucky well. The EYBL is a "grown man's league" that is played above the rim. It is hard to understand the size and athleticism of the players unless you have seen it in person. The Travelers were undersized against every team they played, forcing many Travelers to play out-of-position by having small forwards start at the 4 and play the 5 and having shooting guards play the 3 and even 4 at times. This especially was difficult against the Oakland Soldiers who regularly played three players who are 6'10" or bigger at the same time. The Travelers 10-point loss to the Soldiers was the most significant negative factor for the Travelers in the point differential tie breaker method selected by Nike. The Travelers had a short bench, but managed to avoid significant foul trouble or injuries. Compared to other teams, they had no superstars on the roster. They won by playing solid basketball as a true team. Congratulations to them.

The Peach Jam uses college rules (college 3PT line, shot clock, etc.).

Minor point, but the Scott County game didn't have anything to do with the district seeding because Scott County is not in Dunbar's district.

According to Verbal Commits | Basketball Recruiting, Offers, Commits, Rankings, you can add Matt Rose (2015) and Quentin Goodin (2016) to the list of players who have received offers from Samford. Apparently, Samford has 15 total offers out for the classes of 2015 and 2016 with 6 of those 15 offers going to Kentucky kids.

Tre King did not play this weekend for LCA. I understand that it was due to a previously scheduled family commitment.

Henry Clay over LCA 68-52 for the championship.

Henry Clay over Henderson Co. 61-55 and LCA over PRP 71-68. Henry Clay vs. LCA for championship at 4:00 pm.

It's a big tournament run by KBA so I guess they can call it whatever they want to. For what it's worth, the top of the bracket says "2014 Boys High School Summer State Tournament."

After scoring 37 yesterday in KBA State Tournament, Matt Rose made another statement tonight with 35 points for Lexington Christian in 64-56 win over Harlan County. However, he went down with with an ankle injury near the end of the game after driving hard to the bucket in traffic. Saw him limping with ice taped to ankle after game. His status for tomorrow is unknown. Lots of good teams and games so far at KBA. Lafayette, Scott County and Southwestern among those already out. Final 8 teams when play resumes tomorrow are Madison Central vs. Henry Clay, Henderson County vs. Bryan Station, LCA vs. Sheldon Clark and Johnson Central vs. PRP.

Matt Rose also making his case for best player in the 11th Region. He had 37 points tonight in Lexington Christian's 70-43 win over Perry County Central in the KBA State Tournament, including 29 in the first half before the game got out of hand. BTW, he scored 45 points against Bourbon County about two weeks ago. Here's the link to those highlights:

Here's the link on Matt Rose:

Just posted the following a few minutes ago on the KY-IN All-Star thread before reading this one, but it appears to be especially relevant to this discussion so I have copied, pasted and posted again here: I think Matt Rose will be the best player in the 11th Region this year. I believe he was fifth in voting last year behind Davis, Gilbert, Green and Boggess (all Seniors). Very efficient scorer who never seems to take a bad shot. About 53% from field, 40% from 3PT and 80% from the line last year. He has had to battle injuries this spring during the EYBL season, but seems to be well now. I saw a tweet where he scored 45 against Bourbon County last week (shooting 7 for 9 from 3PT). Here's a link to the video: Lexington Christian's Matt Rose drops 45 on Bourbon County! - YouTube

I think Matt Rose will be the best player in the 11th Region this year. I believe he was fifth in voting last year behind Davis, Gilbert, Green and Boggess (all Seniors). Very efficient scorer who never seems to take a bad shot. About 53% from field, 40% from 3PT and 80% from the line last year. He has had to battle injuries this spring during the EYBL season, but seems to be well now. I saw a tweet where he scored 45 against Bourbon County last week (shooting 7 for 9 from 3PT). Here's a link to the video:

Give credit to Nike for the solution to the problem of 4 teams for 3 spots. Put the two best of the four in and have the other two have a play-in game for the final at-large spot in the Peach Jam. That way no 8-8 team is excluded without getting a chance on the court.

It is exceedingly rare for a game to be forfeited, but the NJ Playaz did forfeit their Monday morning game against Athlete's First yesterday--probably due to travel issues. It didn't really matter to the NJ Playaz as they were one of the best teams in the EYBL and easily in the Peach Jam. I thought that there were one or two other games that were forfeited earlier in the year based on the scores that were reported, but they appear to just have been data errors on the scoreboard.

24 teams make the Peach Jam. The top 5 teams in each of the four divisions automatically qualify for Peach Jam plus 4 wildcards. Although Jackson Tigers are only 8-8, they automatically qualify as they had the 5th best record in Division A. Boo Williams takes one of the four wildcard spots since they were 9-7 but weren't one of the top 5 in the difficult Division C (same division as the Travelers). That leaves four teams with 8-8 records trying to get the final 3 wildcard spots. No one seems to know what method the EYBL will utilize to decide which three teams to select as wildcards. Head-to-head is difficult because some of the 8-8 teams didn't play each other. Total points might not work because one game was forfeited. The best option might be to compare the records of these four 8-8 teams against the 21 teams that are currently in the Peach Jam. In the end, Nike will choose which team it wants in on whatever basis it wants to, leaving three 8-8 teams happy and probably one 8-8 team feeling that it got screwed.

Correction to my earlier post: The only Travelers game that will be broadcast is the 10:30 pm (eastern) game tonight vs. NW Express. The Sunday game will not be broadcast.