Best of Summer V

By Glenn Nelson
HoopGurlz Publisher
Posted Fri, 08/17/2007 - 07:47 In the fifth of six parts, we reveal our Player of Summer, top individual performances and top players, as well as a daily special.

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STORY & PHOTOS BY GLENN NELSON

We called her the best of USA Basketball's Youth Development Festival. She was named the Most Valuable Player at Basketball on the Bayou. And we dubbed her MVP of the crown jewel of summer tournaments, Nike Nationals.

How can Tiffany Hayes not be the HoopGurlz.com Player of Summer?

The 5-foot-10 guard out of Winter Haven, Fla., caught our attention in our hometown of Seattle, proving herself the second-best player at the inaugural T-Mobile Invitational (the best player being the incomparable Maya Moore), so the Connecticut commit actually is a player for all seasons. It's just that summer really stood out. And maybe Hayes' biggest accomplishment was pulling this off while playing for a team, Essence, whose alpha player is the dynamic April Sykes, ranked second overall in the 2008 class by HoopGurlz.com.

Hayes, who is No. 13 in 2008, simply doesn't bring much attention to herself. But when her team needed buzzer-beating buckets to win games, as Essence did at Bayou and Nike Nationals, she was the one called upon - and she delivered. She also hummed along, hitting three-pointers, using her teeth-chattering quickness to blow by defenders for layups, finding open teammates and using her athleticism to full effect on defense.

At UConn, we don't forsee her so much as a bearer of spectacular, 35-point binges as we do someone who delivers, say, 11.5 points, 5.5 rebounds, three assists and two steals per game, as doesn't deviate too much from those established norms from game to game.

In other words, Tiffany Hayes is a relative rarity in girl's basketball: Ulta-reliable.

PERFORMANCES

1. Samantha Prahalis' 9:40 stretch vs. Tennessee Flight: The Long Island point guard has her detractors because of her flashy style of play, but this was a game that showed she also has significant substance. It was a stretch that had fans, coaches and, yes, even us thinking we'd rarely seen an individual rise to this level. Prahalis did not just score points (including a pull-up three-pointer from about 30 feet out), she sliced up the Flight with penetrations that led to wide-open shots for teammates and defense that ignited fast-break opportunities. The result was a 67-53 romp by Exodus that woke up everyone, including, by the way, the Flight.

2. Brittney Griner's 18 blocks vs. Tennesee Flight: Let's clarify this - I was kind of keeping track of Griner's blocks that game and she had at least 18. There are no other sources, so we'll just go with that figure, mythical as it may be. The point is, she may be as famous as a high-school girl's basketball player can get for her dunking. But a game like this showed her real power.

3. Inga Orekhova's four straight threes in 2 1/2 minutes: Earlier this summer, I'd written that girls rarely get so heated from the perimeter. This is going to make me take it back. Impressively, Orekhova's last three resulted in a four-point play, so the Austrian accounted for 13 points during that 2 1/2-minute span against the Dayton Lady Hoopstars in Suwanee, Ga. Orekhova plays this year at The Bishop School in San Diego, Calif.

4. Kaleena Lewis' eight threes at Boo Williams Invitational: Big deal, you say? This was in one game. Yeah, and Kaleena Lewis is just 13 years old, up playing with the big girls on the West Coast Elite club team. Impressed yet?

5. Amber Gray vs. Minnie Ripperton: It would be stretching it to say that Gray won this sing-off with the old-school diva, but the fact that she took on "Loving You" for a HoopGurlz podcast is impressive. We're only kind of goofing here. This moment actually illuminates the kind of I'll-try-anything attitude that makes this Tennessee commit such a great player.

Creme de la Creme Nike Nationals: First of all, there are many well-run tournaments throughout the country, but this is the best event of the summer - bar none. It's a true invitational, so every team has high-major, Division I prospects and you get pool games with the flavor of what would be championship games in other tournaments. Four air-conditioned gyms in the same facility with each pool occupying a gym. Every floor has bleacher stands. The officials are top-notch. Most hotels are 5-10 minutes away. Teams play two games a day - a morning session, a 5 1/2-hour break, then an evening session. Teams and college coaches are fed. Information is fed to everyone on a constant basis - scores, standings, brackets, schedules. The championship games (Silver and Gold) are played on a "main floor" setting, when two of the gyms are combined and the floor is ringed by bleacher seats, with each team occupying its own bench area. For comfort, convenience and drama, this one's in its own league. __ Glenn Nelson

PLAYERS
(Click on Hyperlinked Names for Profile Pages)

1. Tiffany Hayes
2. Samantha Prahalis
3. Skylar Diggins
4. Brooklyn Pope
5. LaSondra Barrett
6. Tierra Ruffin-Pratt
7. Glory Johnson
8. Nneka Ogwumike
9. Caroline Doty
10. Amber Gray

We've already stated our case for Tiffany Hayes. 'Nuff said. Same in a way for Samantha Prahalis, who not only is perhaps the most entertaining high-school girl's basketball to come along, she was the main reason Exodus NYC was a factor on the club circuit all summer.

Skylar Diggins of South Bend, Ind., is just a rising junior, but she has closed out two straight summers with exhilarating performances at Nike Nationals. The previous summer, she was mostly a scoring machine. This summer, at USA Basketball and the Nike Skills Academy, she also revealed the skills to lead a team from the point. To be honest, we had many questions about Brooklyn Pope's ability to stay motivated over long periods. All the Dallas forward did was display excellence over an entire summer, restoring our confidence in her as an elite prospect in the 2008 class.

Many people may not have heard of LaSondra Barrett before the summer, but if you haven't by now, you've been asleep by the pool for the past three months. The Mississippian not only is power personified, she is nimble enough to take defenders off the dribble from the wings. Mostly, she's where the ball is at the most important portions of the biggest games. The same can be said of rising junior Tierra Ruffin-Pratt, who likely is the best individual defender in the country, as well as an attacker in whose hand you place the ball to delliver victories.

Her team only was a factor in tournaments because of her and Glory Johnson of Knoxville, Tenn., was the player you walked away from tournaments coveting if you were a college coach. She not only is one of the fastest players in the country at 6-3, she also is the highest-motored. The summer was like Groundhog Day for teams that had to face Nneka Ogwumike of Cy-Fair, Texas. Over and over, she defied odds and defenses, catching everything thrown her way with those vacuum-cleaner hands and keeping her team in the thick of things.

You can put Caroline Doty of Doylestown, Pa., and Amber Gray of Cincinnati, Ohio, in the same category of elite players - versatile and multiskilled, and great athletes, physically and mentally. Both can shoot, score inside and out, handle the ball, pass and defend. Their greatest skill, however, is the ability to impart their huge will to win on a basketball game.

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Coming Monday: Teams of Summer

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Who Are Your Best of Summer?

Click Here to Tell Us

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Glenn Nelson is the publisher of HoopGurlz.com. He also founded and coached the Dragons and Northwest HoopGurlz select girl's basketball teams. Glenn previously was the editor-in-chief at Scout.com and a longtime, national-award-winning basketball columnist and writer for The Seattle Times. His work also has appeared in several books and national magazines. He is co-author of "Rising Stars: The Ten Best Players in the NBA" (Rosen Publishing, 2002). For more on Glenn's World, click here. He can be reached at glenn@hoopgurlz.com.

Related Players

Inga Orekhova

Tiffany Hayes

Related Schools

Baylor

Connecticut

Tennessee