The team that was using this week's trip to Las Vegas on Thursday morning still looked like it was, well, on vacation.
The team that was supposed to get run out of the gym lost by 34 points. But it got much more out of the experience than the victors, that's for sure.
As expected, the loaded Athlete's First squad out of Oklahoma City finished its run through the National Youth Basketball Championships field at Spring Valley High with an 88-54 throttling of the AZ Rush.
The Rush, a team comprised of players from Cortez High in Phoenix, came into the game pretty much knowing what to expect. Though it hardly showed.
"We knew coming out here that these guys were gonna overlook us," said Rush/Cortez coach Tarik James. "We're small."
The fact that the undersized squad made a run to the state semifinals in Arizona's Class 4A Div. II tournament last season meant nothing to Athlete's First, a team with size, strength and four players in the Rivals.com Top 150 in the class of 2009 (SG Xavier Henry, PF Daniel Orton, SF Terrence Boyd, SF Kyle Hardrick).
Orton said earlier in the week that the trip to Vegas (playing in a field without a team which could match its sheer talent) was more of a chance to enjoy the trip and the city. Henry said it was somewhat of a reward for a long, taxing summer.
Athlete's First had to truly dig to win the 17U Super Showcase Gold title last week in Orlando, Fla., in a loaded field. But most of the teams it faced in Las Vegas it could have beaten by merely showing up.
And realizing that had them in trouble for a bit on Thursday.
While playing less-than-inspired ball for the majority of the first half, the smaller bunch from Arizona proved what hustle could do. Behind the outside shooting of Marlon Gill, Kevin Gray and Chris Garcia, they led by as many as 10 in the first half, and even held a small advantage early in the second stanza.
Then the giants woke up.
Henry was an offensive freak, scoring a game-high 34 points in a variety of ways. He got a bit silly towards the game's end, trying to throw an alley-oop to himself in traffic and failing, but outside of that showed all the offensive tools which have him considered by most to be the No. 2 prospect in the '09 class. (Henry actually deserves some credit, as he played pretty hard the entire time and avoided the temptation to sleepwalk)
Orton started swatting shots like he should have, Boyd worked both inside and outside and point guard Nick Johnson rained a series of threes.
Still, the Rush were just as giddy as Athlete's First following the game despite clutching trophies that were just a tad smaller.
"We come to these tournaments two or three times a summer because we want to get beat up, we want to play against guys we're not going to play against," James said of his squad which will return all five of its starters this winter off a 21-8 team a year ago. "We just worry about running our stuff and doing our thing, and they've been doing that.
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