The Soldiers excel this weekend

The Oakland Soldiers lost their final game but otherwise romped through the Boo Williams tourney. Here's one report:

'Soldiers' At The BooPlex
Dave Fairbank
April 11. 2010

One of the notable teams at Boo's annual Nike Invitational turned in probably the most eye-catching result of the weekend.

The Drew Gooden Soldiers, based out of Oakland, Calif., on Sunday morning destroyed the Spiece Indy team, which featured top-shelf point guard Marquis Teague and 6-foot-10 Louisville commitment Michael Chandler, as well as several other big-time prospects.

The Soldiers -- more on the nickname in a moment -- beat a darn fine Indy team 118-66. They scored more points in the second half (67) than Indy did the entire game. By the way, that's 118 points in 32 minutes.

Understand that blowouts happen at these kinds of tournaments. Kids get tired, teams lose focus, sometimes everybody just wants to go home. By the second half, the Indy kids knew they were whipped.

But the remarkable aspect was the fierceness with which the Gooden kids played, as if they were on a mission...

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