Las Vegas will be the center of the summer circuit basketball scene beginning Thursday as over 600 teams from across the country arrive to participate in one of three tournaments scheduled to run through Sunday.
Adidas and Reebok will each host teams in up to nine age divisions at locations in and around Las Vegas.
The adidas Super 64 field will include more than 260 grassroots squads in four divisions (Under-17, 16, 15, 14). Notable entrants in the U17 bracket include the Atlanta Celtics, Bay Area Hoosiers, Belmont Shore, Compton Magic, Grassroots Canada Elite, Indiana Elite, New England Playaz and Pump N Run Elite.
The Super 64 championship game takes place at 7:40 p.m. Sunday night at Rancho High School’s main gymnasium.
Dwayne Polee and California Supreme will be among the favorites in the Reebok-sponsored event.
File photo by Louis Lopez
The third annual
Reebok Summer Championships drew a field of 136 teams from 28 states and Canada. The event begins with the Create-N-Finish Cup, which will pit several of the elite teams against each other out of the gate.
California Supreme will be among the teams to watch in the Reebok field with at least six high-level Division I recruits in Gary Franklin Jr. (Mater Dei/former USC commitment), James Johnson (San Diego Morse), Tyler Lamb (Mater Dei/UCLA), Dwayne Polee (Westchester/USC), Keala King (Mater Dei) and Kevin Johnson (Serra/rising junior).
Vision Sports' Main Event is expected to include a field of nearly 400 teams in nine separate divisions for boys and two for girls.
Seattle’s Friends of Hoop and Rotary Style Select, Chicago’s Mac Irvin Fire and Nike Team Florida are among the headliners in the Main Event’s U17 pool.
MaxPreps will have coverage from all three events beginning Wednesday and continuing through Sunday.
Notes: New Jersey Nets guard Rafer Alston coaches the New York Panthers, scheduled to compete in Reebok’s event. … Mississippi-based MBA Elite, also in the Reebok field, features an intriguing tandem in 6-8 LaQuinton Ross of Murrah High School in Jackson and 6-8 Rodney Hood of Meridian. Both are regarded as top-flight prospects in the 2011 class. … The three shoe-sponsored events will play out in over 30 area gymnasiums, primarily local high schools. … Organizers from each of the events acknowledged that the economy has played a part in bringing the overall number of teams down from well over 900 a year ago to the roughly 600 expected to compete this week. “Because of the current economic climate in the world and the uncertainty regarding summer travel teams, we were forced to reduce the size of the field for this year from 200 to 136,” Reebok tournament director Jim Allen said.
