It’s the week that college basketball recruiting junkies live for. The top high school prospects on the Nike circuit will descend on North Augusta, S.C., this weekend for the 2013 EYBL Finals at the Peach Jam.
2013 Peach Jam preview: Top recruits take center stage in summer’s premier event
Jahlil Okafor, Tyus Jones, Cliff Alexander and many other young superstars will be on hand at Nike’s AAU showcase in South Carolina.
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The matchups have been determined by the 24 teams’ performances during the four EYBL sessions earlier in the travel season, and Thursday’s pool play games already feature some intriguing games.
College programs sending their coaches to the Nike event will see Jahlil Okafor and Cliff Alexander lead Chicago’s Mac Irvin Fire. Mac Irvin finished the EYBL season 11-7 and will have to face the Jackson Tigers on Thursday night, led by five-star prospect Malik Newman. Alexander and Okafor, both post players, are each considering Arizona, Baylor, Kansas, Kentucky and others. They also rank first and second in the class of 2014 according to ESPN.
Newman, meanwhile, is a 2015 guard who emerged this summer with a stellar mid-range game and unshakable confidence. He averaged nearly 25 points per game in the final EYBL session in Minnesota.
Guard Tyus Jones, ranked third by ESPN among 2014 prospects, brings his Howard Pulley team to Peach Jam with a 12-6 EYBL record. He is a distributor first, totaling 124 assists throughout EYBL play this year, though he also averaged 23 points per game. Howard Pulley’s game against the CP3 All-Stars on Thursday night will be one of the best in all of pool play. Jones will go up against L.J. Peak (Georgetown) and Theo Pinson (North Carolina), who each helped CP3 to an EYBL record of 15-3.
After two and a half days of pool play, bracket play begins Saturday evening with the start of a single-elimination tournament. Pool play games begin at 9 a.m. ET on Thursday at the Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta, and run throughout the day until 10:30 p.m.
You can keep up with all the early results at www.nikeeybl.com to see how your school’s top target is performing.
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