Thursday, July 10, 2014

Who are the likely teams to be playing deep into Sunday at Stellar tournament?

http://blogs.mcall.com/groller/

FROM KEITH GROLLER

The boys portion of the Stellar basketball tournament begins at 5 p.m. Thursday and 15 games are scheduled for opening night.
The 56-team, double-elimination field figures to be quite competitive.
Who's likely to still be playing Sunday afternoon and early Sunday night?
Well, locally Parkland, Allen, Emmaus, Central Catholic, Whitehall and Liberty all figure to do well.
They're all having good summers in the Stellar High School League.
No one is doing better than Parkland, which is 10-0. Allen is 8-1 and Emmaus is 7-2.
What we don't know is how many quality players are going to be lost from these teams because of the Hoop Group event in Reading and other AAU-type exposure tournaments going on this weekend.
Some teams will be without players for the entire weekend and some teams will be missing players for a game here and there.
In the double-elimination format, a loss early in the tournament can almost completely knock you out of title contention because of the number of games you have to play to work your way through the bracket.
And that's why one missing player, even on Thursday and Friday, can change a team's fortunes for the entire weekend.
Reading is also in the Cedar Beach summer league and doing quite well at 8-1. Parkland and Reading play, by the way, Tuesday night when the summer league resumes.
From a fan perspective, the tournament draws more people -- obviously -- with the more local teams left deep into Sunday.
Last year's final between Wilson West Lawn and Faith Christian of Florida was a bit anti-climatic even though Faith Christian was coached by former Whitehall standout Tony Medina.
With a large number of of solid non-area teams converging on Cedar Beach, it wouldn't be a complete shock to have another title game without a local team involved.
Here's a look at some of the other non-local teams and their records from the 2013-14 high school season:
PIAA DISTRICT 3
Berks Catholic 24-6
West York 34-5
Exeter 14-12
Wilson West Lawn 26-4
Cedar Crest 26-6
Manheim Township 13-10
Penn Manor 8-14
East Pennsboro 13-9
Hershey 18-9
Trinity 12-13
Twin Valley 10-11
PIAA DISTRICT 1
North Penn 11-12
Downingtown East 12-11
Boyertown 7-15
Glen Mills 9-14.
Ridley 13-9
Methacton 17-10
PIAA DISTRICT 12
Archbishop Carroll 23-5
Monsignor Bonner 2-10
NEW JERSEY
Wayne Hills 13-13
Phillipsburg 10-13
Washington 11-15

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