Sanford Pentagon Summer Slam: First Look
The Summer Slam event at the Sanford Pentagon starts Friday afternoon and the Prep Hoops Network is looking forward to being there for three days for the fourth straight summer. Here is our “Summer Slam” first look. The Summer Slam…
Access all of Prep Hoops
Continue reading this article and more.
Continue ReadingThe Summer Slam event at the Sanford Pentagon starts Friday afternoon and the Prep Hoops Network is looking forward to being there for three days for the fourth straight summer. Here is our “Summer Slam” first look.
The Summer Slam event includes the SPTS final round of regular season play and year end tournament as well as two divisions at each the 17U and 15U levels and one at the 16U level (there is a 16U orange level listed but nothing in it so that may have been being updated when we looked). Prep Hoops will look closer at the SPTS later in the week, today our focus is the Blue and Orange divisions of this year’s Summer Slam.
17U Blue Division. The Blue division is a 16 team event that includes seven teams from Minnesota (five of them are ranked), three from Nebraska, one from Iowa, one from Wyoming, and four from the PHD area which includes two from South Dakota and two from North Dakota. The event favorites include Comets DLR (ranked 12th in Minnesota as a 20 win team who won the Lone Star Invitational), D-17s (ranked in the top six in PHD with an 11-4 record), BBA Force (a 22 win team that just won the Midwest Summer event in Iowa and they are ranked second in the PHD rankings), Heat Bui (ranked 14th in Minnesota with a 21-10 record, they just went 4-1 in the Adidas Invite in Indy), and Crossfire Weege (ranked 13th in Minnesota with a 24 win season so far).
Every big soccer event they always have a “pool of doom” and this year’s pool of doom is without a doubt Pool C who has three of the best five teams in the event in BBA Force, Heat Bui, and Crossfire Weege. Those games will be tremendous and the poor Lincoln Shockers are going to get smacked. Who got the break? Most likely D-17s. Comets K and WOTN Ewing are decent squads, Comets K just got back in the top 25 rankings and when they have a full team they are dangerous but the D-17s are pretty much Fargo Davies who is the favorite to win the Class A title in North Dakota next year and they have won 11 of 15 in Grassroots play.
Pool A is a two team race between Comets DLR (they have multiple D2 offered kids) and ECI Selects who has been playing well. Pool D doesn’t have a team that is likely to win the event but Select Ellis did win the Select Classic and they are ranked 17th in Minnesota with a 20-15 record. Select Ellis is the favorite of Pool D but Pentagon Buus is there with a 9-7 record and the second OSA Crusaders team is always tough.
17U Orange Division. The Orange Division has seven teams including 22nd ranked Minnesota Select Leafblad, PHD’s 10th ranked PBC Knippling, and then Huron High, the third Omaha Crusader team, Iowa Prep, another team from SW Iowa, and Minnesota Heat Henderson. The Dakota Niners list this event as “optional” so we are hoping to see them jump in as well as we would love to see them play.
16U Blue Division. This is a twelve team event including five from Minnesota, two from Nebraska, two from Iowa, one from Wisconsin, one from North Dakota, and one from South Dakota. There are four pools with three teams in each. Note: our 16U rankings on the network won’t be updated until tomorrow so rankings listed below are from last week.
Pool B includes an unranked squad from the Minnesota Heat (Inniger), Iowa Prep which is a team we know little on, and ECI Peterson who is a .500 club this year ranked 9th in the PHD rankings. The pool seems wide open. Pool C is headlined by Comets Little (ranked 16th in Minnesota with a 23-12 record) which is the team that upset the Pentagon National team in the spring and then won the 16U event. They are back as a favorite to defend their title and they start by taking on the second Wisconsin Playmakers club and HHA.
Pool D has top event favorite Crossfire Swanson is ranked 12th in Minnesota and gets 18th ranked Minnesota Rise in their pool as well as a team from SW Iowa. Crossfire and Rise haven’t played yet so that’s a game to see. Pool A includes the second Omaha Crusaders team, the second WOTN team, and 16-6 BBA Force is also in the pool. BBA Force is the other event favorite as they are 16-6 on the year and ranked 5th in PHD.
15U Blue Division. An eight team event that includes two four team pools and is a somewhat of a South Dakota battle royal led by number one ranked South Dakota Attack who won the Great Plains Alliance last week and has lost once this year after 19 games. The Attack also just won the Ames event and are as heavy of a favorite as you will see in any event all summer.
PBC Long wants a shot and with a 12-3 record and ranked third they could get it. SD Crush is here ranked 7th and then you have 6th ranked South Dakota Storm who is 27-3 on the season and playing against these other SD teams for the first time ready to show that they belong near the top of the 15U rankings. PBC Long and Attack are in pool A, Crush and Storm are in Pool B.
Also in pool A is Powerhouse Minnesota and Omaha Crusaders second squad. The other teams in Pool B are Comets Elite R Schmidt (ranked 16th in Minnesota) and PowerGroup who we know nothing about. The Comets R Schmidt team could definitely make a run although Attack beat Comets Schmidt Elite (the other Comets team that is coached by R Schmidt’s brother James Schmidt who is ranked third in Minnesota but was beat by the Attack).
15U Orange Division. A nine team event with three pools of three teams. There are three PBC teams here (Johnson, Tigers, and Coughlin) sprinkled with one into each pool. Crossfire Belle is the 20th ranked team in Minnesota and they have won 20 games so they will be the favorite to win the Orange division. There is also Minnesota Nice and Minnesota Wall from the Land of 10,000 Lakes, All Iowa Attack Black and Iowa Prep from Iowa, and the third Omaha Crusaders squad.