Back for another week, the Summit Summer League took to PSM Fieldhouse on Wednesday night with a pretty close and fun round of games with more breakout performances, balanced offense and a couple of nice comebacks.
For the uninitiated, each week the teams will change and players will play with different teammates under different coaches. The games are played with a 20-minute first half and an 18-minute second half with a 30-second shot clock and an Elam Ending to close the games out. What is the Elam Ending? After the second half ends, seven points are added to the winning team’s score; that total becomes the target score that needs to be hit to achieve victory.
IMMEDIATE IMPACT
Cameron Summers of Bellmont didn’t participate in Week 1of play, but he surely wasted no time in making a big first impression this week.
Hit a triple? OK. Get downhill and score at the rim? Sure. Throw one down? Why not get up like that.
Summers was a big standout this week and deserves praise not only for what he did, but doing it after everyone else had a week under their belts. That is one of the things about the SSL. Week 1 can always be a bit of a crap shoot and sometimes it’s not the cleanest basketball. That always – and I mean always – changes in Week 2, as the basketball was played at a better level than last.
So Summers didn’t have that build up and that brace of Week 1. He hasn’t played in this league before, but he made sure to stand out and did it with considerable comfort throughout. He didn’t force and he didn’t look lost among guys who are used to this league. Summers was everything you want out of the SSL experience and with Bellmont looking to raise its level of play again this season, he is going to be big for the Braves’ offensive production as a senior. He finished Game 1 with 13 points and in a Game 2 win for Team Deming, he scored 17, which was tied for the most points in a game this week.
LATE 2ND HALF SHOTS
Jayden Phillips of Angola scored just five points in the Game 1 win for Team Riikonen over Team Deming, but they may have been the five most crucial.
With Team Riikonen looking like it could have its back against the wall late in the second half of the first game of the night, Phillips connected on a big three-pointer from the wing to stave off a late pull away from the opposing squad. Then, in the closing moments of the half before the Elam Ending, he showed great poise in hitting a mid-range pull-up that he banked in to send the game into the Elam Ending tied up.
From possibly dead to rights to right back in it, all because of Phillips.
Team Riikonen went on to pitch a shutout in the closing frame, outscoring Team Deming 7-0 to pick up the win. That included five points from Carter Middleton (Carroll), who really started to find his stride in Week 2 after a pretty quiet opening week.
Both Middleton and Phillips are examples of guys stepping up when it matters, and that was what was so much fun this week and generally what happens in this league. Phillips went on to score seven points in Game 2 and Middleton had 15, including three three-pointers and the game-winning assist to help Team Riikonen to the unblemished week. The dup hit big shots in the second half, Phillips in Game 1 and Middleton in Game 2, and both times it was with Team Riikonen fighting back from deficits.
I would be remiss, especially in this area, to not mention Warsaw freshman Jackson Everitt, who scored seven of his 10 points in the second half of Game 1 for Team Riikonen. It was another shining example of not only getting comfortable in Week 2, but how much this league can help an incoming freshman. For Everitt to get 10 points overall and seven in the second half of a comeback win will help him gain considerable confidence before he has ever stepped on a high school court.
THREE BALL AGAIN PAYS DIVIDENDS
Last week, George Poiry and Tayvon Stidams had super-hot shooting games from three-point range and it paid off. Poiry’s team took two wins, while Stidams’ team got the W.
This week, however, it was a bit of everyone’s ability to make the deep shot that stood out.
Don’t get me wrong, there were a couple of big shooting performances, both for Team Deming in the second game, but those were the rarity this week. Cameron Summers (Bellmont) hit four and Paxton Mahler (Homestead) hit three in the night cap as Team Deming beat Team Bloom. They were the only examples of more than two triples being hit by an individual.
In three of the four games this week, the team that hit the most threes won the game.
Team Riikonen’s 11 threes pushed its comeback win over Team Deming and its five triples. Stidams, Middleton, Everitt and Cohen Sorg (Huntington North) each hit two for Riikonen.
Team Bloom hit five threes, but fell to Team Prokop, which hit just three.
Team Prokop turned around in its second game and hit just a single three and Team Riikonen staged its second comeback win with six threes, including two each again from Stidams and Middleton, while Camden Keyser (Huntington North) hit the Elam Ending game-winning triple for Team Riikonen.
And Team Deming edged Team Bloom 9-7 in three-pointers made and picked up a 12-point win. That was the game where Summers and Mahler both were strong as noted above, with Monterius Smith (Wayne) and Brayden Freiburger (Huntington North) rounding out the team’s three-point makes.
FAMILY TIES
As the Summit Summer League gets older, we get to see a lot of firsts.
Last year, Leo grad and current Garrett assistant Ayden Moore became the first former SSL player to also coach in the league. This year, we get to see Monterius Smith, the Wayne freshman and younger brother of inaugural SSL standout Monte Smith as not the first brother connection, but a significant one due to the elder Smith’s impact on the league.
This year, we get a couple of really fun family connections. In Week 1, it was the battle of the Bolens that was fun to watch as Huntington North brothers Brody and Bentley went head to head, guarded each other and talked a bit back and forth in the process. That brotherly competition was a great moment. Did Bentley foul Brody when he blocked his shot in Week 1? I guess we could open that up for interpretation. The two of them got to battle again this week with Brody’s eight points being the leader. But the point is it was cool to see brothers doing battle in this league.
In Week 2, we got to see the first father/son, coach/player dynamic with Team Deming and its coach Josh Deming being able to have his son Liam Deming (Garrett) on the team. While Josh coached against Liam’s team in Week 1, it was cool to see them get to share a team in the league with Josh Deming now in his third year as part of the SSL coaching staff.
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