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Player Diary: Chicago Julian’s Brandon Ewing
Brandon Ewing (Chicago Julian) Special to Chicago Hoops April 30, 2004 Email Questions/Comments To [email protected] Brandon Ewing of Chicago Julian High School brings the second installment of his player diary to ChicagoHoops.com. Brandon ranks as one of the top Class of 2005 basketball prospects in the state of Illinois, and will bring us a special look inside his recruitment, and his life on and off of the basketball court. Whats up everybody? This is B. Ewing back with my second diary entry for Chicago Hoops. Before I update yall on whats been going on with me the last couple of weeks, Id like to thank Brian for showing interest and asking me to do this diary. It has been a very busy two weeks for me. At school, Ive been preparing for the PSAT, attending study groups for the ACT and working to keep my GPA up. I am still in the gym everyday working on my strength and endurance, lifting weights and running the treadmill and of course the 500 jump shots and free throws. It is really paying off this spring and helping me on the grueling AAU circuit. My Meanstreets teammates and I spent the weekend of April 16-18 in Las Vegas at the Pump-N-Run Tournament. We didnt play our best basketball as a team but we advanced to the final four missing the championship game by one point. It was a good showing for us anyway and was an important event for us to keep building team chemistry. We are a good team because we play so well together and we are getting better. We went to the Kingwood Classic in Houston April 23-25. Our team played much better. Our first game was against the Compton Magic from California. The Magic was the team that won the Vegas Tournament the week before, and we beat them by 37 points. We were rolling and won our pool to advance to the Gold Tournament. In Tournament play we faced the Southern California All-Stars. In the first half we were getting blown out but Mike Robinson from Chicago Hales Franciscan was on fire. We were down by 17 points going into halftime. In the second half, Jerel McNeal and I turned it up on the offensive side, because we refuse to lose like that. Jerel finished with 23 points, 20 of them in the second half, and I finished with 30 points, 25 of those came in the second half in front of top notch college coaches. Mike finished with 18, and although most of his points came in the first half, he kept them from blowing the game wide open. Maurice Acker played a great game at the point, and just kept feeding the hot hand like all great point guards do, I swear he had at least 12 assists. Even though we were putting up big numbers, it was our suffocating team defense that made the comeback possible, and Maurice proved that he has great on-the-ball defense, and is a big-time D1 prospect. Donnie Lyons and Joevan Catron from Thornton stepped in and became beasts in the paint, blocking shots and controlling the glass. Donnie had some straight nasty dunks all weekend, and if you guys dont know who he is you better ask somebody! I am sure Donnie impressed a lot of college scouts during this tournament. Oh yeah, we completed a 30 point swing and won this game by 13. We finally lost in the quarterfinals to the Memphis YOMCA team by one point, but not before we got an invite to the Bob Gibbons Tournament of Champions in May. We showed that Meanstreets team is no joke, and should be ranked among the top 25 AAU teams in the country. Before the summer is over everyone will be saying that The Meanstreets is one of the best teams in the country. Well we are next off to Minneapolis this weekend and I will let yall know how that goes. I will also update you on my recruiting which has been REALLY heating up with some big-time programs showing love. Until next time! Peace. |
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