Austin Westlake goes 4-0 to win the Inauguaral 2009 Fall Texas Super Showcase on Sunday at Austin LBJ's High School. The Chaps confirmed my early season prediction that they are the team to beat in the Austin area. Along the way they topped Austin High, Austin Reagan, San Antonio Lee and finally beat Pflugerville 74-64 in the Championship.
Westlake will go as far as the Senior D-1 Triplets will take them. 6'2" PG Cody Doolin is the straw that stirs the drink. The University of San Francisco commit is a deadly, deep shooter who can finish in traffic at the rim. 6'9"P Gus Leeper who visits Arkansas-Little Rock on Thursday is a different player this year. Physically he's stronger, mentally he's confident and his agility and skill level has shown dramatic strides. You read it here first, that I fully expect Leeper to commit to the Sun Belt school in the next several days, once he concludes his visit. 6'6" swingman Conner Kemper is a great catch and shoot guy who causes plenty of mismatches on the wing. His improved ballhandling and quickness along with superior grades have him on the radar of Yale, Northeastern and locally with Texas State and Stephen F Austin.Coach Tres Ellis has a deep crew that is much more althetic than his last year's group. In his second year at Westlake he's really had a chance to hammer home and have the kids buy in to his uptempo full court pressure system. He's got a nice group of supportive role players led by 6'5" Senior Carl Meyertons who is sneaky good in the post and has a nice face up game out to the free throw line. Expect 2011 G Hagen Fell to have a breakout year. He's super athletic, and just needs to learn to tighten up his decision making. Look for 2012 6'6" Drew Wikelius to add one more piece to the puzzle. The youngster has battled injuries the last two years, but when he's healthy is a skilled, physical player down low.
Perhaps the biggest thing to come out of this weekend's championship was getting their District 28-5A foe off their back. In a rare win over a talented Pflugerville team in the final, the Chaps may have gotten a psychological monkey off their backs. Pflugerville has won 7 district championships in a row to this point. Ding dong, the witch is dead? Well, she is for a day. We'll see how it plays out during what should be a great district race.
