Duke recruit Ndudi Ebi has been dominating the play at the USA Basketball Youth
Development Festival. He leads all scorers by a wide margin with a 29.5
average and is also averaging a festival leading 16.rebounds a game,
including 8 offensive boards per contest. You can see the cumulative
statistics here. Note - all the story links require Adobe's Acrobat Reader.
In the
first session, he scored 35 points and grabbed 16 rebounds. He also
tossed in three blocks for good measure. Although it's hard to infer any
more about his defense from the box score it should be noted that none of the
big men on the opposing North team scored more than 7 points. That
includes guys like Brian Randle and Brian Butch.
In the second
session, Ebi's teammate Jackie Butler went off for 28 points and 17 rebounds
while Ebi posted 21 and 10. Once again he had 3 blocked shots. Aside
from David Padgett's 21 and 5 performance, it would appear that the South team
once again dominated the inside play.
The third
session saw Ebi once again lead his team in scoring with 23 points to go
along with 18 rebounds and 4 blocked shots. And in the semi-finals,
Ebi was a monster with a 39 point, 21 rebound game.
The finals of the Festival are today at 8 AM.
Here are some photos of Ebi from USA Basketball
Skinny guy with
a nice stroke.
Battling under
the boards.
Scoring over
Demetris Nichols.
And, as a bonus, here's an interview
with Kris Humphries who is one of the 16 finalists for the 12 member Junior
World Championships team.