By Jack Nelson
The Mater Dei Monarchs open their 2017-18 basketball season against Foothill high school of Santa Ana at the Diablo Inferno tourney at Mission Viejo high school tonight.
Coach Gary McKnight's team is the #2 ranked team in the Southland in the LA Times preseason poll, #1 in Orange County in the Orange County pre-season poll and 16th in the nation in the USA Today preseason poll.
They would have ranked much higher in the national poll prior to the transfer to Findlay Prep two weeks ago of one of the top 3 seniors in the country, 7-3 Sr. Bol Bol and son of the late 7-7 Manute Bol, tallest player in NBA history.
Since then he has committed to play with Oregon University next season where he will likely be a one and done and a top lottery choice in the 2019 NBA draft.
The other top player that transferred out on the same day was incoming transfer 6-3 guard P.J. Fuller who transferred back to the Seattle area because of family matters. He was on last year’s #1 team in the nation Nathan Hale of Seattle where he was a starter and second highest scorer to Michael Porter the #1 player in last season’s senior class.
Even with the loss of those two stars, the Monarchs still have 3 returning seniors that all started at one time or another. One is Co-Captain 6-1 PG Spencer Freedman the leading scorer and assist man on the team. He has committed to Harvard.
The other two are 6-6 guard Harrison Butler averaged over 9 points a game and he has committed to Southern Utah and 6-10 wing Michael Wang who averaged 10 points a game and has committed to Pennsylvania.
6-6 Senior Co Captain Reagan Lundeen also was in the playing rotation and has been looking good in preseason practices. Two other players that also saw action last season are soph Aidan Prukop a good shooting 6-4 guard and 6-6 jr. wing Clay Donahue.
Transferring in from El Camino HS in Oceanside is 6-6 Soph Logan Cremonesi who was a starter as a freshman on the El Camino team which is one of the top teams in the San Diego section.
The Monarchs also have 3 talented freshmen who have made the varsity team and all of them look like they will contribute a lot of depth for the team. 6-8 William Breidenbach and 6-7 Harrison Hornery add extra height and 6-3 PG Devin Askew is considered at the top of his class as a PG in California.
On Saturday the Monarchs scrimmaged Rolling Hills Prep from San Pedro. They are coached by Harvey Kitani who retired from teaching and coaching at Fairfax High school where he coached for 35 years ending in 2016.
Kitani then took a position of coach at Rolling Hills last season and led them to the state Div 5 championship with a 29-2 season record. He has 7 players returning this season and only 2 are seniors. The team has now been advanced to Div 4A in the state.
The Huskies held their own in the scrimmage which had no official scoring. They played 8 quarters with various combinations of players and I think that both teams won 4 quarters.
In the first two quarters where it was the first string players, Mater Dei got the best of them. Freedman hit 4 three pointers and assisted on several others and Butler looked really good, coming up with three defensive steals and two of those resulted in slam dunks.
The Diablo Inferno tourney will give Mater Dei 5 games to decide how the rotation will go. They have kind of a strange schedule in the early season. After this week’s 5 games they will be off for over 2 weeks until the City of Palms Classic in Ft. Myers, FL where there are 7 of the top 25 teams in the nation playing.
Memphis East is ranked in the top three in the nation along with Montverde Academy of Florida. Mater Dei was ranked in the top 3 of the tournament field until the transfer but hit the Monarchs who would have been picked to be in the finals with Memphis.
Mater Dei does have Montverde scheduled for a game at the Hoop Hall Classic in Springfield, MA on MLK day in January. Right after the City of Palms, the Monarchs will play in the Nike Classic up in Oregon where they could meet another top 5 team Oak Hills Academy of Virginia.
So this Monarch team will definitely be playing the toughest schedule any Mater Dei team has played. I had thought that McKnight would not lose his 100th game before winning his 1100th but losing Bol and Fuller will make that a really tough task. McKnight goes into the season with a 1082-98 record.
