McDonald's All-American Game 2012: West Team Will Blow Past East in a Shootout

It's hard to predict the outcome of an All-Star game, in general. With so much talent on the floor, unaccustomed to playing with one another, pretty much anything can happen.

That being said, given the sheer offensive talent on the West side, it's hard to bet against them in this year's McDonald's All-American Game.

The West is led by the Morgan Wootten Player of the Year Shabazz Muhammad (undeclared), who also happened to win the Slam Dunk Contest.

He is flanked by scoring threats Marcus Smart (Oklahoma State commit) and Archie Goodwin (Kentucky commit). However, the West has also seemed more impressive—or at least more intense—in practice.

From Ronnie Flores and Jason Jordan of ESPN.com:

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The West team's practices have been more intense with a focus on scrimmaging, while the East has focused on footwork and fundamentals in drills. The West was getting after it so hard on Tuesday that forward Devonta Pollard of Kemper County (Porterville, Miss.) took a hard blow to his head and guard Yogi Ferrell of Park Tudor (Indianapolis) took a hard spill and crashed into a cameraman.

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Those scrimmages should give the West a leg-up come game time, at least according to Flores and Jordan:

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The performance in those scrimmages would point to the West club being a prohibitive favorite for Wednesday's game. At prior McDonald's Games, however, there have been instances when the apparent underdog has rallied to win after being inspired by talk of poor practices or after losing the official scrimmage.

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If the East can slow the game's tempo and pound the ball inside to talented big men like Alex Poythress (Kentucky commit), DaJuan Coleman (Syracuse commit) and Tony Parker (undeclared), they could pull out the win.

Still, in All-Star games, my tendency is to go with the team that has more skill and is better suited to win a fast-paced, high-scoring game. For my money, that team is the West side.

One way or another, it will be fun to watch.

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