We Speak AAU Basketball
Perfect Season: Team Final’s 16U Squad Goes 22–0 and Takes the Peach Jam Crown
Perfection is almost unheard of at Peach Jam. Team Final’s 16U squad just authored it. The Philadelphia-based program defeated Team CP3 74–65 in the Nike EYBL 16U championship game on Sunday, July 19, 2026, in North Augusta, South Carolina, capping a perfect 22–0 season in the EYBL 16U division.
It was the first undefeated Peach Jam title run in the program’s history at 16U, and only the second Team Final 16U Peach Jam championship, joining the 2008 team that featured Michael Kidd-Gilchrist — a piece of history noted by program directors Aaron Burt and Rob Brown.
Ian Smith and Carter Smith — no relation — shared game-high honors with 17 points apiece in the championship game, and Justin McKie added 16 points on 5-of-8 shooting. Guard Rowan Phillips averaged 16.8 points and 3.3 rebounds across Peach Jam, and NetScouts also credited Phillips, Ian Smith, Carter Smith, McKie and Logan Chwastyk as instrumental in the championship run. It was balance, not one star turn, that carried Team Final through the final — three players in double figures and a backcourt that shared the scoring load.
The weekend paid off beyond the trophy. Ian Smith earned his first college scholarship offer, from Albany, coming out of Peach Jam. And the program’s strength ran deeper than one team: Team Final’s 14U squad also won its Peach Jam championship, beating the New York Lightning behind rising Imhotep freshman point guard Eddie Braswell III, in only the third year the 14U Peach Jam title was contested.
Head coach Sutton, an Imhotep assistant, told City of Basketball Love he believed from the first practice in March that the group could win the whole thing — but admitted an undefeated season “never enters your mind.” Twenty-two games, zero losses and a Peach Jam crown later, Team Final’s 16Us had made the unbelievable the official record.
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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