calumnus said:
concernedparent said:
calumnus said:
concernedparent said:
calumnus said:
MoragaBear said:
calumnus said:
Definitely a position of need with Lars moving on. Plus, Fox's first player in his career from LA?
Welcome to Cal!
Both commits are from LA
I see now that Curtis is from Northridge, San Fernando Valley and played at tiny Heritage Christian. Technically that is Los Angeles, so It counts, but it is not really what I am talking about.
What are you talking about then? It's like saying someone from Queens isn't from NYC because they're not from one of the denser boroughs.
Calling Temecula, in San Diego county "LA" is not like calling Queens, NYC. It is more like calling the Hamptons, NYC. Or a small upscale town in rural New Jersey. "NYC."
Anyway, I won't belabor the point.
I'm talking about Northridge.
Which is why I said he counts. My good friend KAB is from the Valley. The Valley is part of the City of LA.
In looking at the top players in California, there just are not that many coming from the big LA city schools, and of course UCLA, USC and Arizona are the preferred destination for those few.
It is not a big deal. It is like SF City liking recruits from San Francisco. It is more about hometown pride than a Cal recruiting issue.
That's a lie. I never said I liked recruits from San Francisco. How could I? There aren't any. I would like to see my city produce some, but there haven't been many since the glory days of Cal and USF in the 1950s-1960s. The most recent one I remember was Stephen Domingo, and he wasn't near as good as his projected ranking as a junior in HS. Brendan Glapion was AAA player of the year in San Francisco, and was a walk-on at Cal.
San Francisco's problems as far as producing basketball players is that the city has become very expensive to live in, so many whites and most blacks have moved out. We have had a huge influx of Asians and Hispanics. These groups, especially the Asians, produce some exceptional basketball players, but unfortunately, being smaller in stature, most colleges are not interested in them. Black players dominate the recruiting ranks, along with a substantial group of white players, and we just don't have very many of them anymore.
I suspect that the same is true of the City of Los Angeles. Most of our Northern California cities, San Jose, Oakland, Hayward, Fremont, Berkeley, have also seen a similar shift in demographics. I have written a few posts on the Bear Insider where I decried the lack of basketball talent at the high school level in Northern California. Back when the first Mr Basketball award for the best player in California was given to Don Bragg of Galileo and San Francisco, back in the early 1950s. For many years, the award was given half of the years to a NorCal kid, and half to a Socal kid. We had Rabb and Gordon winning the award in the same period, but from there, I think we have to go all the way back to Jason Kidd to find a NorCal player winning it. And through all these years back to Don Bragg, SoCal's population has been larger than that of NorCal. Newell's great Cal teams had rosters made up of mostly NorCal players, but a large number of SoCal players. He had several players from the Central Valley, and a few from other states.
There are other factors. I think computers and especially cell phones have attracted kids to a sedentary lifestyle, not wanting to participate in sports. There is a big addiction problem among kids, not just phones, but dangerous drugs, and the crime that goes with them. The cost of going to watch college and especially pro sports is a reach for the poor kids. Finally, I don't think coaching is very good at the high school level and earlier. I had teammates who became teachers, and some picked up extra money by coaching. Many school districts could not afford sports, so salaries were cut. In coaching the hours are long, the schools are often poorly financed. It becomes a labor of love, and as my teammates got married and began to have families, they quit coaching, because it took too much time away from their families. As parents, many of my relatives have raised young athletes, but this is expensive. Skills academies, uniforms, coaches' salaries, travel to games, often in other states is expensive, and can run into many thousands of dollars, which limits the number of promising players who can participate. Most of these issues must be common to both SoCal and NorCal, I do know that all of Newell's success happened in NorCal, with a lot of NorCal players. One difference between NorCal and SoCal players in my day, was that fast break basketball ruled in SoCal, and defense ruled in NorCal, in high school and in college. Nationally, the east coast, in the cities, defense was also good, but out in Indiana, Ohio, Kansas, Kentucky, fast break was king. Now all areas play the same style, pretty much, a motion offense and a help defense. Still even with all these changes over time, there should be no reason why NorCal can not produce many good recruits, and SoCal can. SoCal has always had more population, and NorCal did produce many good recruits through most of the 20th century. But not lately.
SFCityBear
