The Core Prep Fall Classic was held November 5th at Heritage Christian high school and featured a five-game slate of quality teams from the San Fernando Valley and nearby areas.

Kudos to Core Prep Academy founder Todd Wilson for a great job putting the event together. We caught some of the action and witnessed many outstanding individual performances.

No stats or rosters were kept at the scorer’s table so we’ll only comment on players we could identify. We verified the rosters for the Heritage Christian/Harvard-Westlake game so we have a game report below.

We missed the first two games and arrived as the third game was nearing its conclusion. Oak Park held off St. Monica, 62-53.

In the fourth game, Notre Dame handled Birmingham fairly easily but had to work before eventually pulling away. No rosters were available but three of the Notre Dame players clearly stood out. Senior Caleb Foster is a five-star PG committed to Duke and he showed why with a smooth jumper and ball handling skills,

Four-star senior forward Dusty Stromer is no slouch either and is a Gonzaga commit. He also drilled a few jumpers and displayed some good ball handling work.

The third elite Notre Dame prospect is Houston commit Mercy Miller, a smooth four-star junior combo guard with a big upside. He’s the son of rapper Master P who was on hand to watch the game. Californiapreps.com and Erik Woods will soon have an extensive feature story centering on Mercy and the Miller family.

The concluding game of the event was between host Heritage Christian and Harvard-Westlake and here is our report.

Harvard-Westlake Wolverines 71, Heritage Christian Warriors 52

Harvard-Westlake showed they are a team to be reckoned with as they easily handled a good Heritage Christian squad, 71-52. The Warriors hung tough for a half but Harvard-Westlake pulled away in the second half and were never threatened.

6-8 SG Brady Dunlap set the tone early with a three-pointer to open the scoring.

The senior three-star Notre Dame commit drilled another three a little later to give Harvard-Westlake the lead for good, 8-6, after 6-5 junior Seven Bahati had given Heritage Christian its only lead of the game with a nice putback.

Harvard-Westlake junior Trent Perry capped a 7-0 run with a steal and scoring drive (3-pt play) to make it 12-6. Bahati answered with a fastbreak bucket to stop the run for Heritage Christian.

A scoring drive by senior Giovanni Goree kept the deficit at four, 14-10, and later a 3-pointer by sophomore Roman Fisher for Heritage Christian cut it to three, 18-15, but that was the closest the Warriors would get the rest of the way.

A beautiful step back jumper by Dunlap resulted in a three-point play at the 6:27 mark and capped a 9-1 run to give the Wolverines a double digit lead of 27-16.

Heritage Christian fought back and closed the margin to 30-24 after Bahati completed a three-point play at the 3 minute mark.

But Perry answered with a three ball and Dunlap added two free throws and Harvard-Westlake led at the half, 35-24.

The Wolverines opened the second half with a 10-2 run to make it 45-26. Dunlap capped it with another three-pointer and junior Robert Hinton added a three-pointer and a nice scoring baseline drive.

Freshman Amir Jones got in on the action for Harvard-Westlake with an athletic scoring drive and a three-pointer at the 4:45 mark to make it 65-37 which matched the Wolverines’ largest lead,.

Heritage Christian kept battling, though, and finished the game with a 10-2 run to make the final score, 71-52.

No scoring stats were available