We Speak AAU Basketball
Georgia Stars’ Peter Julius Owns the Paint at Peach Jam
The paint at Peach Jam belonged to Peter Julius. The Georgia Stars’ 16U center, listed at 6’10”, averaged 16.2 points, 13.3 rebounds and 2.2 blocks per game at the Nike EYBL Peach Jam, while shooting 60.9 percent from the field, according to NetScouts Basketball’s top-players report from the event. The Peach Jam, the EYBL’s season-ending championship tournament, ran July 14–19, 2026, in North Augusta, South Carolina.
Julius saved his biggest line for elite company: a 21-point, 19-rebound performance against Brad Beal Elite, per NetScouts. The Atlanta-based Georgia Stars reached the 16U Elite Eight at Peach Jam, where they were drawn against AB Elite in the quarterfinal round. For a Stars team built around its frontcourt, Julius was the anchor at both ends — finishing plays inside on offense and erasing them on defense.
Julius is a class of 2028 prospect at Eagle’s Landing Christian Academy in Georgia. Southeast Hoops Report, in its October 2026 ranking of the state’s top centers, described him as a dominant paint presence who scores off the catch and off the bounce, has added a mid-range jumper, and uses his length and physicality to alter shots at the rim. That October assessment only confirmed what Peach Jam had shown in July.
He is also the latest product of a program on a remarkable age-group run. The Georgia Stars won the 2025 Peach Jam 15U championship with largely the same core group — the program’s second straight Peach Jam age-group title after winning 14U in 2024 — beating Team Takeover 70–66 in that 2025 final.
A double-double average, 2.2 blocks a night and nearly 61 percent shooting against the best 16U competition in the country: Julius’s week in North Augusta was a statement from a young big man whose name the recruiting world will be hearing a lot more of in the class of 2028.
We Speak AAU Basketball
New Heights Claims Adidas 3SSB 17U Title at Palmetto Road as Antonio Pemberton Puts On a Show
New Heights left Rock Hill with the top prize. The program won the 17U championship at the 2026 Adidas 3SSB Palmetto Road Championships, held July 16–19, 2026, in Rock Hill, South Carolina, with Mass Rivals finishing as the 17U runner-up, according to 247Sports and Hoops HQ.
The weekend’s loudest individual performance, though, belonged to the runner-up’s point guard. Antonio Pemberton, a Brewster Academy guard in the class of 2027 ranked 33rd nationally by 247Sports, starred for Mass Rivals all weekend. Hoops HQ reported that Pemberton scored 29 points and hit the game-winning shot in a 71–69 win over Compton Magic, and that he scored 31 points in the quarterfinals.
247Sports told the same story with its own numbers: its coverage credited Pemberton with averaging over 26 points per game across the Palmetto Road weekend, with games of 31 and 33 points. Whichever account you take, Pemberton was the name college coaches left Rock Hill talking about.
The setting amplified everything. The Palmetto Road Championships are Adidas’s summer finale on its 3SSB circuit, staged the same weekend as Nike’s Peach Jam, roughly two hours apart in the Carolinas, per Hoops HQ. The weekend also fell inside the July NCAA live evaluation period, and 247Sports noted college staffs — including Ohio State head coach Jake Diebler and his assistants — in attendance evaluating prospects at both Palmetto Road and Peach Jam.
Below the 17U division, Team Loaded swept the younger titles at the same event, winning both the 16U and 15U Palmetto Road championships, per 247Sports. But the weekend belonged to New Heights at the top of the bracket — and to Pemberton, whose runner-up run was the breakout story of Adidas’s summer finale. New Heights’ title closed the 3SSB summer at the top of the circuit’s oldest division. For a circuit built to stand alongside Peach Jam on the same July weekend, Palmetto Road delivered its own championship moment — and, in Pemberton, its own star.
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