Henricksen: News, notes and thoughts from the Chicago Elite Classic

There was plenty to watch and learn from this past weekend’s Chicago Elite Classic. Here are all kinds of thoughts from the fifth-annual event.

➤ Curie basketball has reached new heights. And that’s saying something considering nearly everyone imagined the pinnacle of coach Mike Oliver’s program’s had to happen while Cliff Alexander was on the court a few years back.

But Curie shot past the label of “best program without a sectional title” by winning a Class 4A state championship last year. Then it entered this season with a bulls-eye on its back as the preseason No. 1 team.

Curie continues to show it’s a program that has elevated itself and is playing at a different level. This past weekend the Condors put in some work, taking care of East St. Louis and Jeremiah Tilmon on Friday night in Chicago and then beating Belleville Althoff and Jordan Goodwin Saturday night in Kentucky.

➤ Simeon’s Talen Horton-Tucker made a statement in his team’s season-opening win over Gonzaga, the national power out of Washington, D.C. The 6-4 junior put up 26 points, pulled down 14 rebounds and handed out four assists.

A super-intriguing prospect with tools and talent, Horton-Tucker has long been the City/Suburban Hoops Report’s No. 3 ranked player in the Class of 2019. He’s a big-bodied wing blessed with versatility and a unique game, including an underrated passing ability that rivals a lot of point guards.

➤ Kenwood is better than I thought. Even after watching the Broncos this past summer fully assembled, it was difficult to see –– or at least project –– how it would all come together for coach Marlo Finner.

While it’s a super small sample size thus far, Kenwood has solid point guard play in Bryson Langdon, a veteran senior post presence in Manny Patterson and a host of capable perimeter players with offensive capabilities and upside. The potential is there to be better than last year’s team led by the Division I tandem of Nick Robinson and Zion Morgan.

➤ Another team that’s going to be better than anticipated: Fenwick. I had the Friars at No. 18 in the preseason, due mostly to the fact Mike Smith had graduated after putting that team on his back and carrying last season.

But that No. 18 ranking was too low. This team has barely had any practices together at full strength due to the extended high school football playoff run, yet beat a talented Oak Park team in overtime and remains unbeaten on the season.

➤ While we’re talking Fenwick, it’s nice to have a couple of senior rocks to lean on in guard Jacob Keller and Jamal Nixon.

Keller, a 6-3 guard who pounds a defense with his power, strength and athleticism, is going to be watched closely this winter by college coaches as an unsigned senior. Nixon, meanwhile, is a throwback. The 6-4 forward does anything –– big or small –– to help any team he plays on win.

➤ I know I keep repeating myself in talking about the improvement of Joliet West’s Teyvion Kirk over the past three years. But to see how far the 6-3 point guard has come is pretty remarkable and a credit to Kirk. He was absolutely terrific in Joliet West’s win over North Lawndale. His trajectory as a player continues to point straight up.

➤ Young’s Lucas Williamson, a wing with size at 6-5 and a lunch-bucket mentality, has the likes of Northern Illinois and Hofstra hot on his trail. He remains one of the better unsigned seniors in the state and impressed in the loss to Kenwood with a sneak-up-on-you 25 points.

➤ Yes, I billed the Evanston-Montverde game as a David vs. Goliath matchup in the Chicago Elite Classic preview. And it was just that. And, yes, there was an endless list of Division I players on the floor for Montverde for basketball fans to watch, including arguably the most talented sophomore in the country.

But a game involving a prep school super power against a local community high school simply doesn’t interest me. We know what we’re in for 90 percent of the time. It has to be a pretty special high school team to play with a collection of all-stars who have been gathered from all over to form this monster prep school giant.

Watching a power like Montverde beat up on a really good Evanston team, which is a bonafide top five team in the Chicago area, is a little like watching the Soviet Union hockey team toy with countries in the Olympics from 1964 through 1988.

➤ This was Jeremiah Tilmon’s one and only trip to the Chicago area. The 6-10 post player is the consensus top prospect in the state and headed to Illinois next year. Yet he played just a little over half the game in his team’s loss to Curie.

I realize high school basketball is nothing like the NBA as far as officials giving the best players star treatment, nor should it be. However, Tilmon was completely taken out of the game by the officials.

Tilmon was whistled for two very cheap fouls (Nah, we’ll call them flat-out bad calls) in the loss to Curie. He was also given a technical for hanging on the rim on a dunk. He certainly did hang on the rim, but couldn’t we have known what the circumstances were at that point?

It’s just too bad the poor calls went against the state’s top prospect. Several fans were looking forward to seeing Tilmon play care-free basketball (something hard to do when not in the flow and saddled with foul trouble) and watching East St Louis scratch and claw to stay in the game with Curie.

➤ I know the Notre Dame-Loyola game maybe wasn’t the most eye-pleasing game from a fan’s perspective, with Notre Dame pulling out a xx-xx win. But Notre Dame is unbeaten and has tremendous size and length that will give a lot of high schools serious problems.

Coach Tom Les can go ultra-big with the luxury of having the long and rangy 6-6 Jeameril Wilson at guard, while mixing and matching the likes of 6-5 Chris Hienichen, 6-9 Sean Johnson and 6-8 Dusan Mahorcic.

➤ The Chicago Elite Classic has become one of the marquee attractions of the high school basketball season in Illinois. The two days of basketball at UIC brought over 50-plus Division I prospects, rivalry games, the state’s top prospect, the state’s No. 1 team and featured nine of the top 12 teams in last week’s Chicago Sun-Times rankings –– and 11 of the top 25.

This event and weekend in Chicago is a terrific experience for all the participating teams, whether they’re national or local programs. However, the one complaint is there are simply too many games. Lets shrink that thing down on Saturday from seven games to four (maybe five?).

Follow Joe Henricksen and the City/Suburban Hoops Report on Twitter @joehoopsreport