The McDonald's All-American Game selection committee's recently released annual list of nominees originally included two New York City basketball players who no longer play high school hoops, and of course The New York Daily News, which broke the story late last week, cleverly called it "a whopper of a mistake."

Current Hutchinson (Kan.) Community College freshman forward Tafari Whittingham and former Pathways (Queens, N.Y.) Prep forward Jordan Washington, who has been barred from playing basketball at the school, have -- as The Daily News is wont to say -- "played as many games this season Ronald McDonald himself."

"Shows how much they know," said Abraham Lincoln (Brooklyn, N.Y.) High head coach Dwayne "Tiny" Morton, who had Whittingham on his Railsplitters roster last season.

And that's not even the best part. While there's no debating the talents of Whittingham and Washington, there is plenty of debate, however, about who is to blame for the gaffe.

Whittingham is averaging 9.8 points and 4.6 boards for unbeaten HCC, the National Junior College Athletic Association's No. 1 ranked team. As a senior at Lincoln last winter, he was suspended during the Public School Athlete League playoffs for allegedly throwing a punch during a forfeit loss to South Shore (Brooklyn, N.Y.) High.

Meanwhile, Rivals.com rates Washington as a three-star recruit with offers from Louisville, Pitt and Villanova, among others, but the Pathways principal hasn't cleared him this season after he briefly left for West Oaks (Orlando, Fla.) Academy last year, according to The Daily News report.

On January 15, Dallas (Texas) Prime Prep superstar Elijah Thomas scored 15 points in the first half of an 84-36 victory against Urbandale (Iowa) ABCD Prep. He scored 0 points after that, though he had plenty of opportunities to do so.

Prime Prep forward Elijah Thomas, who scored exactly 15 points as a tribute to his late grandmother — Nike via Rivals.com

While some might have assumed the lack of second half scoring was due to Thomas’ own inefficiencies, that couldn’t have been farther from the case. Rather, the powerful 6-foot-8 forward was intentionally refraining from taking any clear shots as a tribute to his late grandmother.

As reported by USA Today, Thomas was looking for a way to honor his grandmother Annie Lee Bennett, who died on January 15, 2009. Because she passed on the 15^th, Thomas decided he would score exactly 15 points in honor of her memory, and not a bucket more. He kept his personal dedication to himself so that no one could talk him out of the tribute.

“I didn’t tell anybody,” Thomas, one of the nation’s top sophomore prospects, told USA Today. “I probably should’ve told my coach, but it was just something that was really personal for me. He was wondering why I wasn’t finishing around the basket. I even air-balled a layup, but I told him later and he wasn’t mad at all. It’s something special I wanted to do for her. I just wanted to make her proud. I know she was.”

Thomas isn’t the first prep prospect to score a specific amount of points to honor a late relative, with Chris Paul’s 61 point outburst in a high school game after his grandfather’s death the most memorable.

As far as baskets off inbounds plays go, it would be hard to top the one scored by San Jose (Cal.) Archbishop Mitty School star Aaron Gordon at the 2013 Hoophall Classic.

The Hoophall is an annual prep basketball fest that takes place of MLK weekend, featuring some of the top talent from around the country. The 2013 edition was no exception, with the likes of Chicago (Ill.) Whitney Young High, Tilton (N.H.) School, Chicago (Ill.) Simeon High, Mouth of Wilson (Va.) Oak Hill Academy, Lone Peak (Utah) High and Archbishop Mitty among the headliners.

Among all the top prospects featured at the event -- and both the top two overall prospects, Andrew Wiggins and Jabari Parker, were in attendance -- no bucket may have been as forceful as Gordon’s rather authoritative slam.

With his Mitty team holding an inbounds pass on the baseline to the right of the backboard, Gordon exploded to the hoop from the opposite top of the key. He elevated toward the rim just as an inbounds pass came in, eventually flushing home a right-handed jam above (or perhaps on top of, depending on your angle of view) a Lone Peak defender in the paint.

When a hockey game concludes with a final score of 3-1, and one team outshoots its foe by a whopping 38 attempts, it’s usually pretty obvious which team is on the winning end of the scoreline.

Hopkins goalie Erin O'Neil, who had 38 saves in a 3-1 victory — Minnesota Hockey

Not when Erin O’Neil is between the pipes.

As reported by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and Osseo Sun Post, the Hopkins (Minn.) High girls hockey team somehow topped Minnetonka (Minn.) High 3-1 on Saturday night despite being outshot by a count of 46-8.

In fact, a cursory glance at the box score makes it pretty obvious exactly how Hopkins emerged with a victory. While Minnetonka could only slip a single shot past O’Neil, Hopkins got goals from Shortie Sheran, Jillaine DeYoung and Nina Rodgers.

Hopkins’ performance in net was spectacular, yet it was hardly her first. The goalie has been the true standout in Hopkins’ 15-5-1 start, which brought the Royals closer to Minnetonka, which currently sits in the league’s top spot.

Still, even for O’Neil, Saturday’s 45-save victory was an eye popping performance.

Based on International Basketball Federation records, Bishop O'Connell (Arlington, Va.) senior forward Junior Etou will turn 21 years old this spring and should therefore be ineligible to play for the Knights, according to a Deadspin report.

FIBA records indicate D.C. area hoops star Junior Etou is 20 years old -- Rivals.com

A cousin of Oklahoma City Thunder forward Serge Ibaka and fellow Democratic Republic of Congo native, Etou ranks as Rivals.com's No. 142 national recruit in the Class of 2013 and holds offers from Clemson, Kansas, Maryland, Miami (Fla.) and West Virginia.

One of the country's top teams, O'Connell maintains its 6-foot-8, 225-pound star is 18 years old, but FIBA record indicate a different story. The Arlington Country Day (Jacksonville, Fla.) School transfer's given name, Luc Tselan Tsiene Etou, appears in three separate FIBA-sanctioned events from 2009-10 with two separate birthdays: April 6 and June 4, 1992, Deadspin reported. Either birthday would make Etou significantly older than the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference's birthday cutoff of Sept. 1, 1994.

While basketball's global governing body confirmed to Deadspin that it received either a passport or birth certificate that confirms the June 4, 1992 date is an accurate one, O'Connell president Katy Prebble told the media outlet, "The school has the documentation, including his passport, verifying the age of Junior Etou to be 18." O'Connell coach Joe Wootten and WCAC commissioner Jim Leary declined comment.

[Also: NBA Power Rankings: Thunder stand tall]

In 2011, Etou's birthdate on his Wikipedia page was changed from June 4, 1992 to 1994 from an IP address in Jacksonville, Fla., where he played high school ball at the time.

This season, Etou has averaged 15.3 points and 11.9 rebounds during O'Connell's 16-3 start.

They came for the sales. They stayed for the 152-pound bout.

With their sport in the midst of a decline in public interest in the area, two Oklahoma high school wrestling coaches decided to host their annual dual meet at a nearby mall. The teams set up their mat directly outside the ground floor of the Quail Springs Mall’s Macy’s store, and a crowd quickly gathered around to take in a unique atmosphere with more fans than either school would traditionally see short of the annual state meet.

As reported by the Oklahoman, the meet was contested between Edmond (Okla.) Memorial High and Putnam (Okla.) North High, and was originally the brainchild of a Memorial assistant coach. While the dual meet had been scheduled for mid-December, a mall Santa Claus had reserved the space outside Macy’s for that date, so the schools had to adjust their schedules to host the event in January.

The result was an eventual 38-32 victory for Putnam North and some very excited wrestlers and fans.

“It was crazy,” Putnam North wrestler Austin Carter told the Oklahoman. “I couldn't have asked for anything better. The crowd was more hyped. There were probably people here who didn't know anything about wrestling, but yet they were still cheering. I thought it was great.”

The goal of attracting new fans was clearly successful, too, with random passers by stopping to check out the commotion and staying for the wrestling.

“I think it is awesome in a setting like this,” Edmond Oklahoma resident Mike Brandt, who came to the mall with his wife and daughter, told the Oklahoman. “Nothing against [wrestling], but if I didn't have a son or daughter in it, I probably wouldn't go watch it.”

Josiah Gustafson might not look like the most obvious super dunker, but the Omaha (Neb.) Millard North High senior can really, really get up. He proved that better than ever before on Saturday, when he took a loose ball on a fast break and soared completely over the head of a Lincoln (Neb.) Southeast High defender Aaron Walker.

As you can see in the video above, Gustafson sized up the unnamed Southeast foe as he closed in on the basket on a fast break. Then, instead of putting up a running shot as he headed into the lane, or attempting to allude him in the paint, the Millard North senior instead decided to just go right over Walker.

The result was one of the more spectacular dunks of the season at any level, with Gustafson sending the Millard North home fans into absolute delirium. Even more impressively, Gustafson was fouled in the process, with the senior calmly stroking the subsequent free throw for one of the more emphatic three-point plays you’ll ever see.

By game’s end, Gustafson had added 15 other points to the two he earned on that breakaway bucket, enough to lead his squad with 18 points in a 60-44 win. The dunk was no minor factor in the victory, either, serving as a focal point in a 17-3 Millard North run that opened the third quarter and paced the Mustangs to their 16-point victory.

"That dunk was a factor, no doubt about it. When you go from a seven-point lead to a 10-point lead, that's big, but when you do it like he did, that gets everyone going," Millard North coach Chip Bahe told the Lincoln Journal. "He got after it."

In the aftermath of the Manti Te'o-Lennay Kekua hoax, one would think that anything and anyone remotely connected to Notre Dame would be particularly careful that anything they say related to the school is absolutely and completely accurate.

George Walton Academy WR Stanley Williams, who fabricated a visit to Notre Dame — Rivals.com

Evidently one top recruit missed the memo.

As reported by Rivals.com Notre Dame affiliate Irish Illustrated on the site’s message boards and a handful of other outlets, four star junior Bethlehem (Ga.) George Walton Academy running back Stanley Williams, a Georgia native who has committed to Georgia but is still visiting other schools, spoke about taking a visit to South Bend. That makes sense, since Williams was scheduled to visit Notre Dame on Saturday.

[Related: Manti Te'o story has no obvious criminal angle, it appears]

There was just one catch: He never made it to South Bend at all. Instead, Williams just gave an interview with Blue and Gold Illustrated as if he did.

“The visit went great,” Williams told the site. “It was great to experience something new and different, and we had a great time at the game. I had been looking forward to it for a while, and it was great to just get out there and see a new place. I plan on getting up there a couple more times in the future.

“Before I took the visit I was very interested in them since they were coming by my school and showing interest in me. After taking the visit there, they are definitely high up there on my list and a factor in my recruitment. They’re definitely an option for me to go to. I’m just looking forward to continuing building our relationship.”