Bay Ball players are still tearing it up in college basketball

The Bay Ball basketball tournament is gone from Cape, along with the Little Big House, but outstanding players from that tournament are still tearing it up in college basketball. The Bay Ball Classic ran three years: 2005, 2006 and 2007.  In 2009 Blake Griffin, a tournament veteran, was the first player chosen in the NBA draft and was the John Wooden Award winner while playing for Oklahoma. Lance Stephenson, a Bay Ball veteran who played at Abraham Lincoln in Brooklyn, is a freshman at Cincinnati and scored 14 in last Saturday’s win over Connecticut.

Stephenson was New York State Sports Writers Association player of the year and is a former Cape Gazette Athlete of the Week. He scored 2,946 points in his high school career, outpointing Sebastian Telfair, also a Lincoln graduate.

Yancy Gates, also a Bearcat starter, is a 6-foot-9 power forward who led Hughes Center of Cleveland to the Bay Ball championship four years ago. Kemba Walker, a sophomore starting point guard for the University of Connecticut Huskies, is a former Bay Ball MVP who led Rice to victory in the championship game. Xavier Henry, a 6-foot-6 freshman at Kansas, led Putnam City to a Bay Ball title. Putnam played two classic games, one a win over Woodbridge and the other a classic win over Pennsbury of Pennsylvania. Putnam City teammates Cole Aldrich and Sherron Collins were also McDonald’s All-Americans.

Dalton Pepper, a 6-foot-5 small forward, was a crowd favorite at Bay Ball while playing for Pennsbury. Pepper is a freshman on the West Virginia team. He is a three-time all-state selection (twice on first team) and honored by the Associated Press as the 2009 Pennsylvania player of the year. JayDee Luster played for Hoover High of San Diego when his team visited the bay Ball Classic. Luster is now the starting point guard for the Wyoming Cowboys. The Bay Ball Classic ended badly after a year-three run because the money wasn’t there, but it did provide some great basketball.

Cape’s new Little Big House is the perfect venue for a holiday invitational tournament. Hopefully, one will be back as early as this December.

I’M YOUR PUPPET - Clark Kellogg is the top basketball analyst for CBS. Last Saturday I was weary as one game blended into another when I heard Kellogg say, “There is no sense putting a guy on the line with under two minutes remaining in a tie game and giving him two free yanks at the puppet with no time running off the clock.”

Do you suppose there is a paid mentor censor on payroll to critique the performance of commentators after games? I could be that guy with my journalistic experience and time served in high schools.

“Clark, let me be clear. Don’t be talking about free yanks at the puppet as a metaphor for free throws. Can you feel me?”

BACKWARD GLANCE - The 1997-98 Cape boys basketball team finished the regular season 20-2. They were winners of the Mayor’s Cup in the Slam Dunk Tournament and were coached by Ed Waples, who was voted Delaware’s coach of the year. The starting five for that team included Ronson Burton, Mardy Biles, Julius Hazzard, Olin Bolden and O.J. Wilson. Carl Floyd was first off the bench and sometimes started.

SNIPPETS - Frank Masley from Wilmington carried the United States flag in the 1984 Winter Olympics. Frank, a three-time Olympian, was a luger. His highest finish was 12th. He was inducted into the Delaware Sports Hall of Fame in 1997. I was the emcee and I remember saying, “Inside Delaware the No. 1 question is, ‘What is a luge?’”

And at the Winter Olympics the No. 1 question is, “Where is Delaware?” Masley has a successful company that designs gloves for the military that don’t inhibit the tactile sense when out hunting for hiding militants.

If you YouTube “LeBron High school clips,” you will find him dunking at Cape’s Little Big House as part of the montage. All those memories were plowed under in the name of upgrade. It was like taking a bite out of an historic landmark.