Wow.   What a week in Cali.   We sent a full team to Southern California to determine the top skilled players in the CIF-SS (Cali speak for California Interscholastic Federation – Southern Section, we will stick with CIF-SS).  We left Cali having named Senior Dylan Garrity (Edison High School, Huntington Beach, CA, 20.5 ppg in 2010 – 11) and Junior Kari Korver (Valley Christian H.S., Cerritos, CA, 25.6 ppg in 2010-11) as the inaugural skill champions in all of SoCal.  At first glance, naming a champion only for CIF-SS may sound a bit smallish, since it’s only the Southern Section, and not all of California.   But realize that California is an enormous state, and the CIF-SS is the largest of the nine athletic sections.  With 580 high schools in the Southern Section alone, this would make it the 8^th largest state.   It’s a big deal.

For those that haven’t been reading our recent posts (what gives?) – 94Fifty was asked to help add a new element to the 2011 edition of the Southern Section finals, and the result was the first ever skill championships of its kind in the world.   Nearly 80 contestants from across the region competed, most of them nominated as the MVP from their respective leagues. We saw some outstanding skills on display.   In addition, 22 games were played over the course of the 5 day event, giving us the opportunity to watch some fantastic basketball.   What basketball junkie could ask for more?!

For the competition, there were two rounds to determine the overall champion, and we named the top ball-handler and shooter for boys and girls after the preliminary round.  The first round of the competition involved our advanced ball-handling drills and a 10-shot shooting competition, where we awarded the majority of points based on the accuracy percentage (80%=80 points) and a bonus for shot release speed – the faster the release the more bonus points a player would receive.  Each player shot from 18 ft, but after each shot the players were required to turn and run to a spot 10 feet behind the shooting location, then return to catch and shoot off the move for their next shot.   We combined the ball-handling scores and shooting scores into a final score to select the top 5 boys and girls to compete in the final round.

After the preliminary rounds, our ball-handling champions were clear.   Gary Mathews from Whittier High School (20.6 ppg in 2010-2011) popped an 81.66 score in the advanced ball-handling to take the boys title, while Tyler Kim from Marlborough High School (16.2 ppg in 2010-11) recorded an 82.10 to easily take the girls ball-handling crown.    On the shooting side, Junior to be Max McCoy (14.9 ppg, Royal High School, Simi Valley) hit 80% of his 18ft shots to earn 80 points on accuracy, and had a lightning fast .697 shot speed to earn 20 bonus points to squeak by a fine shooting performance from Mitch Marmelstern (St. Margaret’s, 20.9 ppg).     On the girls’ side, Kari Korver hit 80% of her shots with an impressive .657 shot speed to cruise to a victory.   Korver also performed well on her ball-handling and advanced to the final round at the top of the leader board as did Tyler Kim and Riki Murakami (Redondo Union, HS).   For the Boys division, Max McCoy joined Garrity with Marmelstern and Carl Cooper to compete for the overall skills title.

In the final round players performed the same set of ball-handling drills, but had each player shoot 20 shots instead of 10.  Korver dialed up her skills and popped an 80+ on the ball-handling to take a surprising lead over Tyler Kim, who recorded a 75 during the finals heading into the shooting round.  While on the boys side, Garrity took the early lead on the ball-handling with a 74.15.    During the shooting segment, Tyler Kim bounced right back by hitting 16 out of 20 of her shots with an impressive .76 release speed, giving her 85 points and what looked like enough to win it.   Korver responded by starting out hot, hitting 9 of her first 11, but hit a cold spot to finish with 13 out of 20 but a much quicker .68 shot release.   The difference in shot speed gave her 20 bonus points to Kim’s 5, closing the gap enough to give her the 165 to 160 victory and the girls’ title. Our scoring worked as planned, rewarding the shooters for a faster release combined with accuracy.  We want shooters to be fast and accurate, and while both had very good release time, Korver was more likely to get her shot off in a game situation.

For the boys, McCoy shot well in the finals, hitting 13 out of 20 and again with lightning release speed of .639 to get 20 bonus points and a total of 85 shooting points.  But it was not enough to overcome a very accurate 18 out of 20 shooting display by Garrity in the final round, despite his release speed of .982 seconds.  The 90% accuracy gave him 90 total points.  More importantly, Garrity’s ballhandling lead of 74.51, ahead of Carl Cooper’s (Arrowhead HS) 68.88 and McCoy’s 67.66 gave him an overall final round score of 164.51, well ahead of the pack.

Overall – it was a great event and every player came to win.  We could see the focus and the intensity by every player, which is what we love about this game.   Congratulations again to all the finalists and the 2011 champions.