A day of flash and fun

   DENVER - Forty of the best high school basketball players in the state took part in The Show, a pair of allstar games that were more flash than finesse Saturday night at the Pepsi Center. That's what made it different from regular games, not to mention a lot of fun.

    "It's a real different feeling," said Palmer's Leah Fitzgerald, one of five area players who participated.

    No one had more fun than Palmer's Reggie Jackson. The Boston College-bound senior scored 20 points in the Blue team's 95-81 win over the White squad.

    He had fun from 3-point range, on alley-oops and on a 360-degree dunk. He had been working on that one for a while.

    "I had been practicing it since the beginning of basketball season," said Jackson, the Gatorade Colorado boys basketball Player of the Year.

    Taylor Morgan of Cripple Creek-Victor added six points for the Blue, while Widefield's Julien McCollum scored eight for the White.

    But, as Jackson put it, the outcome wasn't nearly as important as the privilege of being invited.

    "It's a great honor just to come out and play with all these other great players," he said. "If I were just watching The Show, I'd been happy with that."

    Fitzgerald and Colorado Springs School's Vanessa Leeper played in the girls game, which was won by the White 72-71 after Brittany Long's 3-pointer with 3 seconds left helped her team cap a 6-0 run over the final 23 seconds.

    "That was insane," Leeper said. "When she got the rebound, we knew she was going to put it up."

    "We knew when she shot, we were going to win," Fitzgerald said.

    Though neither Fitzgerald nor Leeper started, the experience of coming off the bench wasn't lost on them.

    "It's kind of cool. It gave us a chance to see what was out there when we got in," Leeper said.

    The games were broadcast live on Altitude, which caused confusion among officials about media timeouts.