Meet Mason Washington

Prior to this season, if someone was offering a hot tip that Mason Washington was going to blow up in the basketball world, the reactions probably would have been along the lines of:

* do you mean baseball?

* is he the guy from Modesto Christian a couple of years ago?

*  Mason who? (granted, these would be Beyer High and Davis High alumni)

Yes, Washington was a very solid backcourter at Modesto Christian who also played baseball as a senior in 2014 and was honored with all-state recognition for his production. He then spent a redshirt season on the San Joaquin Delta College baseball team.

But now he has returned to the court where he earned back-to-back First Team All League honors as a Crusader.

This is what has he has achieved thus far at Modesto Junior College:

* 23 games, 23 starts
* 19.8 points a contest (ranked 12th in the state)
* 4.7 assists a contest
* 4.3 rebounds a contest
* shooting 51%, 51% and 89% respectively

Washington stands 6-feet tall and is now a strong 200 pounds, qualifying him as a 'man-guard' in MJC Coach Paul Brogan's jargon -- that definition being a backcourter who can handle the physical pounding of the game and still stay on balance with dribble-drives and on form with shot attempts.

Quite the number of rental cars as well as other vehicles festooned with insignias and the like indicating employment at this and that four-year university have been seen parked outside of the Modesto Junior College gym in the last few months. The term so often heard is "it's all about the Benjamins" but, in this case, it's a Washington in demand.