Creme of the County: Best of the 2018 class
La Jolla, Ca. — Ready or not, the class of 2018 participants at the Creme of the County are on the “college clock” as their days as high school students and basketball players are numbered.
The COTC 2018 Creme game featured many of San Diego’s best prospects the likes of Dartmouth-commit Taurus Samuels, his teammate at Vista High, Isaiah Morris, San Diego High’s Thomas Marcus, Poway’s Zach Reiter, El Camino’s Jalen Flanagan and Torrey Pines’ Finn Sullivan.
Even with all of those talented players, who will likely play college basketball at some level next season, the guy who hasn’t played a lick of club basketball, Castle Park’s Adrian Lee, came away with the MVP trophy.
Lee has nice size and perimeter feel for a 6-foot-6 forward. Lee connected on a handful of 3-pointers in the early-going to give Team Black some cushion, and though Team White made a late push behind Flanagan, Samuels and Rancho Bernardo shooting guard Knox Winkler, Lee, Marcus and Co. held on for the 93-86 win.
Vista High point guard Taurus Samuels, a Dartmouth-commit, was one of many seniors who played well at the Creme of the County.One of the more interesting dynamics of this game was the battle between high school teammates in Morris and Samuels.
The duo has done battle for the last three years at Vista High and perhaps even longer at the club level, and each of them pull the best out of each other.
Morris is easily one of the best perimeter defenders in Southern California, while Samuels is the best all-around point guard in San Diego, and if I had to pick a winner of the duel, it would be Morris based on the final outcome of the game.
Flanagan saw his recruitment pick up while playing with Coastal Elite in July and he carried over that productivity into September, scoring 12 points at the Creme of the County.
The 6-foot-3 wing has a lot of wiggle to his game and has a knack for getting into the teeth of the defense and scoring with a mid-range pull-up or crafty finish around the rim.
It was also great to see a handful of “sleeper” type seniors in this game as guys like Sullivan, San Marcos forward Kody Clouet, Point Loma’s Kyle Johnson and Poway’s Jordan Cooke-Harper had plenty of opportunity to put themselves front-and-center.
Sullivan is a young senior at 16 with a high basketball IQ; Clouet is as long as they come with a smooth shooting stroke from 3-point range; Johnson has all the potential in the world and is only a couple of tweaks away from becoming a legit high Division II or low Division I prospect; Cooke-Harper is a physical interior presence on both ends with good length and timing on his defensive contests.