We Speak AAU Basketball
Miami’s Nightrydas Elite Rode Lewis Uvwo’s Rim Protection to the Peach Jam Semifinals
Nightrydas Elite’s Peach Jam run ended one win short of the final — but nobody in North Augusta patrolled the rim like Lewis Uvwo. The Miami-based program reached the Nike EYBL 17U semifinals behind its 6’11” center, falling to Drive Nation 62–48 in the semifinal on Saturday, July 18, 2026, during the July 14–19 tournament in North Augusta, South Carolina.
Uvwo, a class of 2027 center at Prolific Prep in Fort Lauderdale, averaged 11.0 points, 9.4 rebounds and 6.0 blocks per game at Peach Jam, and was named to the All-Peach Jam first team and as the event’s defensive MVP, according to NetScouts Basketball. Even in the semifinal loss, he was immense: 10 points, 14 rebounds and nine blocks — one of three near-triple-doubles he recorded at Peach Jam.
The honors kept stacking. Uvwo was named the inaugural EYBL 17U Defensive Player of the Year after averaging 5.1 blocks per game across the entire circuit season, and he received the award trophy in North Augusta before the semifinal. Nightrydas finished Peach Jam with a 5–2 record.
Six blocks a game is not a stat line that survives on reputation — it changes how opponents have to run their offense, possession after possession. Drive Nation’s 62 points in the semifinal came on a night when Uvwo erased nine shots by himself, and Nightrydas still pushed the eventual finalists to the tournament’s penultimate round.
Peach Jam was the peak of a summer that had already marked Uvwo out: earlier in the summer, he was named co-MVP of the 2026 Pangos All-American Camp in June. Between the Pangos honor, the Peach Jam defensive MVP award and the EYBL’s first Defensive Player of the Year trophy, Uvwo’s summer résumé needs no embellishment — he was the defining rim protector of the grassroots season. For Nightrydas, a semifinal run powered by the circuit’s best defender is the kind of July that raises a program’s ceiling for years.
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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