Midnight Madness Opens It’s Doors For the First Run Of The Summer

London Pro-Am-winners of the Men's Division

Ballers from up and down the country migrated to Leyton, East London on Sunday for the first Midnight Madness run of the summer. With the new format a lot of people including myself didn’t know what to expect but the one thing that was guaranteed is you’d see some of the top talent in the country on display.

Midnight Madness 2010 sees a much larger focus on teams and an organised tournament format in contrast to years gone where I think many felt more individual. In each age group, there were four pools so each team was guaranteed a minimum of three games. The winner of each pool would go through to the semi-final and then the winners of that through to the final.

The winning team will see automatic qualification (all 10 of them!) to the Midnight Madness All Nighter in Nottingham, whilst the remaining 15 best ‘Free Agents’ from the other teams based on their Ball Without Bias stats will also qualify.

The day was rammed full of highlights (none bigger than this Ovie Soko facial) and it was once again proved that Midnight Madness is not to be missed!

Individual ‘Free Agent’ qualifiers will be announced at the official Midnight Madness website on Wednesday (tomorrow). The qualifying teams on the day are as follows….

Midnight Madness South East Team Qualifiers

U18’s Division
“The Truth”
Jordan Spencer
Tyrell Isaacs
Ishmael Dixon
Jefferson Davies
Dwayne Orija
Justin Dakora
Flyn Hallissey
Michael Kiganda
Dwayne Lautier
Ayo Lateef

U20’s Division
“Team HCC”
Josh Johnson
Anthony Okereafor
Peter Olisemeka
Helio Sampaio
John Odumosu
Leon Bennett Harris
Jamal Lewis
Akeem Abdul
Wayne Yeboah

Men’s Division
“London Pro-Am”
Mansour Mbye
Lekan Papoola
Pete Deppisch
Pierre Henry-Fontaine
Courtney Van-Best
Hydro
Jordan Parrish
Williamz Omope
Zayne Gawanab

Random Thoughts/Notes

• The new format doesn’t lend itself to me getting highlights as I have to pick and choose between courts (whereas last year all Elite action took place on one court), the amount of times I was filming on one court and heard everyone erupt on another destroyed my life lol.
• The overall standard of the u18s was disappointingly low. I don’t think there was much doubt the two teams in the final would be London Ballers (led by Chuck Duru, Tayo oyefusi, and Prince Lartey) and The Truth (though London Ballers had a scare in the semi final, winning by 1 against the Croydon team).
• In the U20’s, everyone was surprised to see ‘Domination’ lose in the final to Team HCC. Domination were stacked up with three GB U20 ballers (Ovie Soko, Ryan Martin and Raheem May-Thompson) as well as a decent supporting cast (Dave Oladuji, Kieran Luke amongst others) yet it wasn’t enough as they went down in overtime to the underdog HCC side (roster listed above-definitely not a shabby team by a long shot).
• Ovie Soko straight up dominated the U20 competition, I think I’d put him as the number two U20 baller outta the UK behind Ryan Richards.
• Other notable performers in the U20’s-Anthony Okereafor, Raheem May-Thompson, Robert Gilchrist, Levi Noel, Josh Johnson and Ryan Martin showed his range.
• Good to see the men making a return to the action, with the most veteran team of them all (London Pro-Am) winning it all.
• Working on getting the mixtape done asap (thought I have 12 hours of footage to go through!)-stay tuned!