Recent Stories with tag franklin high basketball

Doing my extensive preparation for Metro League Tuesday, I noted that Franklin sophomore Anrio "Rio" Adams gets little love from the national scouting services. Scout.com calls Adams a one-star recruit, and Rivals doesn't rate him at all. I've seen Adams play a couple of times, and I remember a fast, intense, long-armed, tall guard with good skills. A superstar in the making. Was I missing something?

No. I was not. Adams was stellar in Franklin's 87-59 victory at Ingraham High. He was unstoppable in the open court on offense. He showed a deft passing touch, sometimes giving up a shot to find open teammates. And he displayed his athleticism, rising from practically a dead stop to thrown down a dunk.

And then there was his defense. Long-armed and explosive, he's a nightmare for opposing guards. And he takes instruction well. Before one Ingraham inbounds pass, Franklin coach Jason Kerr yelled to Adams, who was defending the inbounder. "C'mon, Rio, deflect a pass." Rio did just that, leading to a Franklin steal and basket. Anrio Adams is legit, and the scouting services need to get their acts together.

I'd expected a matchup between Adams and Ingraham's leading scorer, Devonte Spellman. But Spellman played sparingly. Perhaps he was in foul trouble. Or perhaps he had upset his head coach, Jeff Menday, who was upset for most of the game. Menday, a D1 head coach in the mid-90s, and more recently coach at Shoreline Community College, barked out instructions in a husky voice that resonated gym-wide.

"Malik! Stay down!" he yelled at 6'4" sophomore Malik Barnes.

"You gotta go in there harder than that," he yelled at one player after a passive drive. "That's soft!"

When the referees missed an obvious Franklin travel, Menday fired his pen on the court in frustration, then had to go retrieve it mid-play.

This is not to single out Menday for yelling. I've never seen a successful high school coach that didn't yell at his players. I'll never forget Franklin's Jason Kerr screaming "GET OFF MY COURT!" at his players after a poor defensive effort at Ballard.

Kerr was a little more relaxed in this game. After one time out, he asked the refs to check to see if his team had one second left on the shot clock. "Could you verify that? I don't really care either way." Franklin had jumped out to a healthy lead at this point....

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Continuing our sporadic tour of 206 hoopsters around world, we land in Europe, home to several ballers with local ties.

Bobby Jones

The 206 star: Former Husky Bobby Jones, who's leading Banca Tercas Teramo of the Italian Serie A in scoring, with 12.6 ppg. One of Jones' teammates is Drake Diener, one of the famed shooting Deiner brothers. Jones' team, sadly, is just 2-5 on the year.

Teramo is a town of about 55,000, about two hours from Rome near the Adriatic Sea. Here's a picture of city hall at night. Nice!

Garfield High and University of Nevada star Marcelus Kemp is playing in Italy's second-division league, in Sassari. Kemp averages 17.3 ppg for the third-place Banco di Sardinia Sassari squad.

Sassari is 120 miles from the Italian mainland on the island of Sardinia. It is Sardinia's second-largest city, with a metro population of 300,000. Learning Italian won't necessarily get Kemp by, as many people in the area speak Sassarese.

Franklin High grad Lyndale Burleson also attended Nevada--in fact, he and Kemp are members of the Wolfpack all-decade team. Now Burleson plays for USC Heidelberg in Germany's second division. Burleson's averaging 18.3 ppg, which puts him third on the high-scoring Heidelbergers....

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Peyton Siva

Franklin grad Peyton Siva didn't take long to make an impression at his new school, Louisville. Last night, in the Cardinals' exhibition win over Bellarmine, Siva displayed the otherworldly hops we Metro League fans enjoyed these last four years, claiming two of ESPN's top ten plays. Watch here.

The first, #6, comes when the 6'-0" Siva flies above the rim to block a shot attempt. He also claims #2 with a putback reverse dunk.

"Those were two of the more spectacular plays I've seen," said coach Rick Pitino. "Not too many six-foot guys do that," he said, adding (to laughter), "I did it a few times...."

Another stellar member of Washington's hoops Class of '09 made his debut last night: Former Bellarmine Prep guard Abdul Gaddy came off the bench in  Washington's exhibition win over Central Washington.

Gaddy's debut was not as explosive. On the bright side, he displayed his playmaking skills by contributing six assists in just 24 minutes. But he also committed 4 fouls, turned the ball over three times, and missed all three of his shots.

Gaddy told the Times' Percy Allen afterward that he had a little trouble adjusting to the speed of the college game....

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