An NHsportspage announcement plus news, notes & AAU
2016-02-23
Keith Brown becomes Pelham's all-time scorer after Matt Regan's 102nd career win
By Dave Haley
NHsportspage will become a paid registration only website this spring. With access given to only those who are registered.
We are very proud of how much our coverage & audience has grown over the last eight years but the truth is we have gotten to the point where it is more than a ‘after work hobby’.
We had hoped to avoid this by offsetting the costs of our six person team with a donation drive in each of the past two seasons but in the end we only received donations from 8% of our readers (according to Google analytics) in back to back years.
Those that have donated this year will continue to have full access to all of our game videos, weekly columns, podcasts, scoring leaders and box score information through the entire 2017 basketball season.
We want to extend that coverage to you as well.
Today we want to announce to all of the players, parents and coaches who read, watch and listen to NHsportspage that from today until Thursday March 10th you can join our list of readers that will be given uninterrupted full access to the website through the 2017 season for a one time cost of $50.
After March 10th the cost will be determined with our website provider (early estimates are at roughly $150 annually). So today we wanted to let all of our readers know they can be ‘Grandfathered’ in as subscribers for 1/3 of that cost.
To the senior players we cover and their parents; for only $50 you will continue to have access to all of your statistics, columns, previews and our over 70 highlight videos. Coverage you can look back and enjoy even after graduation this June.
To the underclassman players and their parents; we hope that this is no-brainer. You will continue getting all the coverage you have come to enjoy all the way through next season, beginning with our four Division previews and our Fourth Annual Coaches for a Cause Jamboree in December for a one time cost.
To become registered today with our donators and to be locked in at just $50 for coverage through next season simply click the link below to join our list of NHsportspage members;
Register today for full access to NHsportspage or simply click the donate button on our homepage.
(Editors note: I have had seven or eight people already reach out to me about mailing a check and registering through email. That is just as quick and easy..you can email me at davehaley@nhsportspage.com anytime)
$100 will still make you a Gold Level Member and continues to guarantee you access to every single game we cover in full sent to you by email.
Game coverage and a Wednesday podcast
We are back at it with coverage of four games this week & two games tonight.
Pete Tarrier & The Great Jon Kesty will be out at Bedford when the Bulldogs take on Trinity while Jennifer Chick, Justin McIsaac & I will be at Stone Gymnasium when Portsmouth takes on Bishop Brady in a rematch of last season’s Division II championship game.
On Wednesday Justin McIsaac & I will be back with our second Wednesday podcast in a row breaking down the games from Tuesday night and all the news around New Hampshire high school basketball. Controversial & otherwise....
The 2016 Seacoast Basketball Tournament
The 67th Seacoast Basketball Tournament will be held from mid-March thru mid-April. The tournament features upwards of 80 + teams from youth to high school ages competing during this month-long tournament.
For the high school boys, in the "A" division, teams can be comprised of players from multiple high schools. For the "B" division, players must be from the same high school.
NHsportspage is the three time defending champion of the ‘A’ division after ending the run of The Fighting McIsaacs the past two years. We hope more teams will be put together to compete against other teams from New Hampshire as well as Maine.
The Fighting McIsaacs have re-tooled and apparently gone to recruiting lengths that would embarrass Jim Harbaugh. Your Fighting McIsaacs will feature; Cal Connelly & Matt Roy of Spaulding (of course..), the all-state backcourt of Bryant Holmes & Cody Morissette of Exeter, Anthony Primavera of Winnacunnet, Zak Kerr & Andrew Wojack of Merrimack and Connor Walsh of Trinity who I am today demanding show his birth certificate at the first game.
In case you missed it Pete Tarrier gave away four tickets to WWE Smackdown to McIsaac & Connor live on the air during Saturday’s New Hampshire High School Hoop Show.
The NHsportspage team roster for 2016:
Keith Brown of Pelham
Evan MacDonald of Manchester Central
Jaylen Leroy of Manchester Central
Cody Graham of Portsmouth
Joey Glynn of Portsmouth
Jake Coleman of Londonderry
Tommy Romick of Pinkerton
Matt Rizzo of Pinkerton
Brennan Morris of Pinkerton
There is still time to put a team in the tournament and games are played at the New Connie Bean Center in Portsmouth starting the week after the Division I & II championship games.
Register online at: 2016 Seacoast Tournament or feel free to email me at davehaley@nhsportspage.com with questions.
Finally with AAU sign-ups going on I was asked to re-post an AAU breakdown for parents I posted last year in Part II of the final Thursday Thoughts column.
It ended up being the most re-tweeted story in our history and was picked up by several organizations.
Here is that column and some information for parents still trying to decide what is the best program for their son or daughter this summer.
AAU basketball
One of the interesting aspects to having covered New Hampshire high school basketball this closely for eight years is that when it comes to players & parents searching out colleges or prep schools I see it now from the coaches perspective. I’ll explain….players, and their parents, come and go but the veteran coaches around the state are around long enough to see what it all led to. After eight years of watching it was time to comment on it.
I love the interaction I have with parents. I’ve met some great people with some of those relationships and friendships having continued on long after their son graduated. Nearly every all-state/AAU player that I’ve covered over the past eight years had a school he was going to play for. And nearly 95% do not.
The reality is playing Division III basketball is in some ways a lot harder than playing Division I or II. You don’t have the scholarship keeping you there, you don’t have the amenities afforded to bigger schools with a larger budget and you are playing a good number of your games in front of crowds smaller than a big high school game would draw. It’s a season that starts with conditioning in September, practice in late October and runs until March. Your friends are off on holiday & spring break while you are on the floor six days a week. That is why a lot of players that are recruited end up going the intramural route.
I spoke to a first team all-state player who graduated last year about his plans. He went to school to play but quickly decided it wasn’t for him and will be playing intramurals at UNH next year.
Here is what you get when you go that route: You play with your friends, you play very good competition (the courts are littered with former all-state players from all over New England at any big college). You compete with those same friends to win the school wide 3 on 3 tournaments where the winner advances to regionals against school like UConn & Boston College and you have the freedom of no weekend games or practices.
Does that sound like a bad deal? You’re reading a guy who took that deal and loved every second of it.
So why make this point? Because the reality is 95% of the players on the all-state lists we released this week are not playing at the next level for any considerable amount of time, and there is nothing remotely wrong with that. The beauty of this game is you can play with your friends until you are in your 50’s. Travel tournaments, summer leagues, 3 on 3 tournaments you name it and you can play in it. I know this because I’ve watched two full cycles of freshman to seniors come through and the coaches know it because they have seen this movie before.
In 2010 I was a part of WGAM’s panel of voters for New Hampshire player of the year. The candidates included Pinkerton center Zach Mathieu (who broke the all-time tournament scoring record that season), Alex Burt of Dover, Cormac Fitzpatrick of Memorial, David Madol of Trinity, Sean Martin of Conant and Mike Barton of Portsmouth. Those were the top six players in the state; do you know how many played four years of college basketball? Two. Alex Burt and Sean Martin had terrific careers, Mathieu was an outstanding baseball player but only 33% of the top 6 played basketball in college.
This brings us to AAU basketball. What I wrote about The Spartans program back on 1/29/2015 raised a lot of eyebrows and got a lot of feedback (I received seven emails, six positive & one negative). Let’s dive deeper into the point I was making. There are many, many, growing by the hour, AAU programs around. Like anything in life there are good programs and bad ones and this column is not an anti-AAU stance. I played AAU basketball and enjoyed playing tougher competition with better teammates.
I only wrote about the Spartans because of the negative feedback I have gotten from veteran head coaches on the seacoast, where the Spartans operate out of. I had several parents reach out to me, many of them parents of girls, to ask me what information and feedback I had gotten, because they had concerns over where to send their son or daughter. Those conversations went very well and I appreciated that the parents were concerned enough to do their due diligence.
A typical parent likely has three main reasons why they will be writing a sizeable check to an AAU program.
1) I want my child to get considerably better. I want my son or daughter to learn the game. I want them to learn the fundamentals of being a good basketball player and how to be the most prepared player on the floor next winter.
2) I want my son or daughter to get a lot of exposure and in turn, interest from colleges.
3) I just want my son or daughter to play a lot of games. It’s good for them to be active and I want them involved in games with teammates. It is most important that they play lots of games.
All are valid reasons. Let’s tackle them one at a time.
In regards to #1)
AAU might not be your best route; you need to investigate the program you choose. There are development programs dedicated to skill development and fundamentals that take you to the next level. The key is the player buying into the process (as players like Ian Sistare & Kaleb Joseph have) because true development isn’t always fun.
The easy way out, the fun way out, is just to say you’ll get better playing a bunch of games, but that doesn’t happen. Players need to learn the principles of defense, the fundamentals of footwork, how to manage the game clock and how to get their shot off with a 6’7 player closing out on them. That isn’t always fun, it’s work. Just like playing college basketball is work.
If you’re looking for this for your son or daughter there are programs like BST Basketball, Next Level Basketball or Integrity Hoops for example that focus on these principles. Rick Gorman from the New England Storm has a very good reputation as well.
Just to be clear in case there is any confusion: I recommended these programs because I have met with the principles (Brett Sellingham, Matt Regan & Noah LaRoche) countless times to observe them and talk about their programs & beliefs. None of the three people or programs has ever paid me a nickel for my endorsement,,,I’m even pretty positive they never even paid for my $2.00 coffee when we’ve met.
In regards to #2
Here is where we run into trouble. If a coach is telling you they are going to get your son or daughter recruited, how exactly are they doing that? If they are telling you they will play in front of scouts, what level of scouts? If you play in a National tournament at the highest level are major Division I programs there to see your son who plays Division II NH basketball and averages 12 points a game? No. Same applies for Division II (your player of the year lasy season Cody Ball was awarded a scholarship to St Anselms, 2014 POY Eric Gendron is playing at Division III Trinity… that’s a small window of scholarships being handed out).
Year after year parents pay money for their child to be seen but the reality is they haven’t developed the skills to play at the next level. They also haven’t fought through the process to make them be able to stay in a program once they got there. This is why so many players do not end up playing college basketball. When your child has done the hours of monotonous work on fundamentals they are prepared for hours of college practices and workouts more than the player who just wants to get back in a game.
If you are writing a check expecting your son or daughter to be recruited you need to do your homework. What players from this program are currently playing college basketball and what was their level of involvement in the program (kids can play in one weekend tournament and be listed on an AAU website as alumnus so you need to dig deeper than clicking a website). What college programs does the AAU program have a relationship with? A program that has a number of players coming through the AAU program and landing at that particular college program?
Here are two simple ways to find out what level your child is at (at a total cost of $0.00):
Find out when Southern N.H University (an elite 8 men’s team this season in Division II) or St. Anselms is playing pickup ball and have your son or daughter go down and run with them. How do they do? Can they compete at that level? You’ll know very quickly.
Ask his/her head coach. You’re not paying the coach, this is a person who has watched your child play countless hours of basketball. They have no agenda or motive to tell you anything but the truth. Ask their coach.
If you ask the person you are handing a $500 check to you get what you deserve as they say. We live in a part of the country with the very best prep programs in the country, two elite Division II programs in our home state and an NCAA tournament Division III program in Keene. If you want the truth about where your child ranks, free of charge, you’ll get it quite easily.
In regards to #3)
This is simple. You find a program that plays a ton of games and send them there. The Spartans for example are a perfect spot if this is what you are looking for. They play a lot of games and your child will be getting exercise.
Without referencing any program in particular, the biggest complaint coaches have about some AAU programs is the kids basically are trading baskets running up and down the floor. Kids do not compete at the appropriate level because they are so used to playing four games a day and have to save their energy to do that. So they go half speed as does the kid guarding them. Who is this making better?
If they sit in a 2-3 zone all summer they don’t learn the principles of defense and that is where they come in behind in the winter. Again…to beat the point home…there are good AAU programs and bad. I have seen Miguel Gonzalez work with kids first hand with the Rivals program and he is excellent. Go watch Pelham play and ask Matt Regan about his principles and philosophies at Next Level Hoops. Ask parents that have come from other programs to that program and find out what they have to say. They rave about his insistence on development first.
Understand that for most programs the goal is to bring in as many players as they can to take in as much revenue as possible. If you take your best team and put them in the highest AAU tournament division with players that are going to Kentucky, Louisville and Duke next year they are going to go 0-5. If you put them in the second division there is a good chance they don’t fare any better. How does that make your program look? Isn’t it easier to sell to parents that you went to the final four in the fourth level division?
I want to share a quote from Golden State Warriors head coach and 5-time NBA champion Steve Kerr on AAU Basketball:
‘Even if today's players are incredibly gifted, they grow up in a basketball environment that can only be called counterproductive. AAU basketball has replaced high school ball as the dominant form of development in the teen years. I coached my son's AAU team for three years; it's a genuinely weird subculture. Like everywhere else, you have good coaches and bad coaches, or strong programs and weak ones, but what troubled me was how much winning is devalued in the AAU structure. Teams play game after game after game, sometimes winning or losing four times in one day. Very rarely do teams ever hold a practice. Some programs fly in top players from out of state for a single weekend to join their team. Certain players play for one team in the morning and another one in the afternoon. If mom and dad aren't happy with their son's playing time, they switch club teams and stick him on a different one the following week. The process of growing as a team basketball player — learning how to become part of a whole, how to fit into something bigger than oneself — becomes completely lost within the AAU fabric.’
The most common answer I hear from parents in regards to AAU is that they don’t know any other alternative. When they are told their child is a Division II or Division III player and that never materializes the check has already cleared and they simply more forward.
Take the time to investigate the proper program just as you would any college or prep school. If you simply want your child playing games then it’s easy, a schedule will make the decision for you. But every year I have parents telling me where their child will be playing and six months later they’re not. Every parent wants what is best for their kids and that is why I love the conversations I have with parents. Making the best decision is a big part of that guidance.
We are very proud of how much our coverage & audience has grown over the last eight years but the truth is we have gotten to the point where it is more than a ‘after work hobby’.
We had hoped to avoid this by offsetting the costs of our six person team with a donation drive in each of the past two seasons but in the end we only received donations from 8% of our readers (according to Google analytics) in back to back years.
Those that have donated this year will continue to have full access to all of our game videos, weekly columns, podcasts, scoring leaders and box score information through the entire 2017 basketball season.
We want to extend that coverage to you as well.
Today we want to announce to all of the players, parents and coaches who read, watch and listen to NHsportspage that from today until Thursday March 10th you can join our list of readers that will be given uninterrupted full access to the website through the 2017 season for a one time cost of $50.
After March 10th the cost will be determined with our website provider (early estimates are at roughly $150 annually). So today we wanted to let all of our readers know they can be ‘Grandfathered’ in as subscribers for 1/3 of that cost.
To the senior players we cover and their parents; for only $50 you will continue to have access to all of your statistics, columns, previews and our over 70 highlight videos. Coverage you can look back and enjoy even after graduation this June.
To the underclassman players and their parents; we hope that this is no-brainer. You will continue getting all the coverage you have come to enjoy all the way through next season, beginning with our four Division previews and our Fourth Annual Coaches for a Cause Jamboree in December for a one time cost.
To become registered today with our donators and to be locked in at just $50 for coverage through next season simply click the link below to join our list of NHsportspage members;
Register today for full access to NHsportspage or simply click the donate button on our homepage.
(Editors note: I have had seven or eight people already reach out to me about mailing a check and registering through email. That is just as quick and easy..you can email me at davehaley@nhsportspage.com anytime)
$100 will still make you a Gold Level Member and continues to guarantee you access to every single game we cover in full sent to you by email.
Game coverage and a Wednesday podcast
We are back at it with coverage of four games this week & two games tonight.
Pete Tarrier & The Great Jon Kesty will be out at Bedford when the Bulldogs take on Trinity while Jennifer Chick, Justin McIsaac & I will be at Stone Gymnasium when Portsmouth takes on Bishop Brady in a rematch of last season’s Division II championship game.
On Wednesday Justin McIsaac & I will be back with our second Wednesday podcast in a row breaking down the games from Tuesday night and all the news around New Hampshire high school basketball. Controversial & otherwise....
The 2016 Seacoast Basketball Tournament
The 67th Seacoast Basketball Tournament will be held from mid-March thru mid-April. The tournament features upwards of 80 + teams from youth to high school ages competing during this month-long tournament.
For the high school boys, in the "A" division, teams can be comprised of players from multiple high schools. For the "B" division, players must be from the same high school.
NHsportspage is the three time defending champion of the ‘A’ division after ending the run of The Fighting McIsaacs the past two years. We hope more teams will be put together to compete against other teams from New Hampshire as well as Maine.
The Fighting McIsaacs have re-tooled and apparently gone to recruiting lengths that would embarrass Jim Harbaugh. Your Fighting McIsaacs will feature; Cal Connelly & Matt Roy of Spaulding (of course..), the all-state backcourt of Bryant Holmes & Cody Morissette of Exeter, Anthony Primavera of Winnacunnet, Zak Kerr & Andrew Wojack of Merrimack and Connor Walsh of Trinity who I am today demanding show his birth certificate at the first game.
In case you missed it Pete Tarrier gave away four tickets to WWE Smackdown to McIsaac & Connor live on the air during Saturday’s New Hampshire High School Hoop Show.
The NHsportspage team roster for 2016:
Keith Brown of Pelham
Evan MacDonald of Manchester Central
Jaylen Leroy of Manchester Central
Cody Graham of Portsmouth
Joey Glynn of Portsmouth
Jake Coleman of Londonderry
Tommy Romick of Pinkerton
Matt Rizzo of Pinkerton
Brennan Morris of Pinkerton
There is still time to put a team in the tournament and games are played at the New Connie Bean Center in Portsmouth starting the week after the Division I & II championship games.
Register online at: 2016 Seacoast Tournament or feel free to email me at davehaley@nhsportspage.com with questions.
Finally with AAU sign-ups going on I was asked to re-post an AAU breakdown for parents I posted last year in Part II of the final Thursday Thoughts column.
It ended up being the most re-tweeted story in our history and was picked up by several organizations.
Here is that column and some information for parents still trying to decide what is the best program for their son or daughter this summer.
AAU basketball
One of the interesting aspects to having covered New Hampshire high school basketball this closely for eight years is that when it comes to players & parents searching out colleges or prep schools I see it now from the coaches perspective. I’ll explain….players, and their parents, come and go but the veteran coaches around the state are around long enough to see what it all led to. After eight years of watching it was time to comment on it.
I love the interaction I have with parents. I’ve met some great people with some of those relationships and friendships having continued on long after their son graduated. Nearly every all-state/AAU player that I’ve covered over the past eight years had a school he was going to play for. And nearly 95% do not.
The reality is playing Division III basketball is in some ways a lot harder than playing Division I or II. You don’t have the scholarship keeping you there, you don’t have the amenities afforded to bigger schools with a larger budget and you are playing a good number of your games in front of crowds smaller than a big high school game would draw. It’s a season that starts with conditioning in September, practice in late October and runs until March. Your friends are off on holiday & spring break while you are on the floor six days a week. That is why a lot of players that are recruited end up going the intramural route.
I spoke to a first team all-state player who graduated last year about his plans. He went to school to play but quickly decided it wasn’t for him and will be playing intramurals at UNH next year.
Here is what you get when you go that route: You play with your friends, you play very good competition (the courts are littered with former all-state players from all over New England at any big college). You compete with those same friends to win the school wide 3 on 3 tournaments where the winner advances to regionals against school like UConn & Boston College and you have the freedom of no weekend games or practices.
Does that sound like a bad deal? You’re reading a guy who took that deal and loved every second of it.
So why make this point? Because the reality is 95% of the players on the all-state lists we released this week are not playing at the next level for any considerable amount of time, and there is nothing remotely wrong with that. The beauty of this game is you can play with your friends until you are in your 50’s. Travel tournaments, summer leagues, 3 on 3 tournaments you name it and you can play in it. I know this because I’ve watched two full cycles of freshman to seniors come through and the coaches know it because they have seen this movie before.
In 2010 I was a part of WGAM’s panel of voters for New Hampshire player of the year. The candidates included Pinkerton center Zach Mathieu (who broke the all-time tournament scoring record that season), Alex Burt of Dover, Cormac Fitzpatrick of Memorial, David Madol of Trinity, Sean Martin of Conant and Mike Barton of Portsmouth. Those were the top six players in the state; do you know how many played four years of college basketball? Two. Alex Burt and Sean Martin had terrific careers, Mathieu was an outstanding baseball player but only 33% of the top 6 played basketball in college.
This brings us to AAU basketball. What I wrote about The Spartans program back on 1/29/2015 raised a lot of eyebrows and got a lot of feedback (I received seven emails, six positive & one negative). Let’s dive deeper into the point I was making. There are many, many, growing by the hour, AAU programs around. Like anything in life there are good programs and bad ones and this column is not an anti-AAU stance. I played AAU basketball and enjoyed playing tougher competition with better teammates.
I only wrote about the Spartans because of the negative feedback I have gotten from veteran head coaches on the seacoast, where the Spartans operate out of. I had several parents reach out to me, many of them parents of girls, to ask me what information and feedback I had gotten, because they had concerns over where to send their son or daughter. Those conversations went very well and I appreciated that the parents were concerned enough to do their due diligence.
A typical parent likely has three main reasons why they will be writing a sizeable check to an AAU program.
1) I want my child to get considerably better. I want my son or daughter to learn the game. I want them to learn the fundamentals of being a good basketball player and how to be the most prepared player on the floor next winter.
2) I want my son or daughter to get a lot of exposure and in turn, interest from colleges.
3) I just want my son or daughter to play a lot of games. It’s good for them to be active and I want them involved in games with teammates. It is most important that they play lots of games.
All are valid reasons. Let’s tackle them one at a time.
In regards to #1)
AAU might not be your best route; you need to investigate the program you choose. There are development programs dedicated to skill development and fundamentals that take you to the next level. The key is the player buying into the process (as players like Ian Sistare & Kaleb Joseph have) because true development isn’t always fun.
The easy way out, the fun way out, is just to say you’ll get better playing a bunch of games, but that doesn’t happen. Players need to learn the principles of defense, the fundamentals of footwork, how to manage the game clock and how to get their shot off with a 6’7 player closing out on them. That isn’t always fun, it’s work. Just like playing college basketball is work.
If you’re looking for this for your son or daughter there are programs like BST Basketball, Next Level Basketball or Integrity Hoops for example that focus on these principles. Rick Gorman from the New England Storm has a very good reputation as well.
Just to be clear in case there is any confusion: I recommended these programs because I have met with the principles (Brett Sellingham, Matt Regan & Noah LaRoche) countless times to observe them and talk about their programs & beliefs. None of the three people or programs has ever paid me a nickel for my endorsement,,,I’m even pretty positive they never even paid for my $2.00 coffee when we’ve met.
In regards to #2
Here is where we run into trouble. If a coach is telling you they are going to get your son or daughter recruited, how exactly are they doing that? If they are telling you they will play in front of scouts, what level of scouts? If you play in a National tournament at the highest level are major Division I programs there to see your son who plays Division II NH basketball and averages 12 points a game? No. Same applies for Division II (your player of the year lasy season Cody Ball was awarded a scholarship to St Anselms, 2014 POY Eric Gendron is playing at Division III Trinity… that’s a small window of scholarships being handed out).
Year after year parents pay money for their child to be seen but the reality is they haven’t developed the skills to play at the next level. They also haven’t fought through the process to make them be able to stay in a program once they got there. This is why so many players do not end up playing college basketball. When your child has done the hours of monotonous work on fundamentals they are prepared for hours of college practices and workouts more than the player who just wants to get back in a game.
If you are writing a check expecting your son or daughter to be recruited you need to do your homework. What players from this program are currently playing college basketball and what was their level of involvement in the program (kids can play in one weekend tournament and be listed on an AAU website as alumnus so you need to dig deeper than clicking a website). What college programs does the AAU program have a relationship with? A program that has a number of players coming through the AAU program and landing at that particular college program?
Here are two simple ways to find out what level your child is at (at a total cost of $0.00):
Find out when Southern N.H University (an elite 8 men’s team this season in Division II) or St. Anselms is playing pickup ball and have your son or daughter go down and run with them. How do they do? Can they compete at that level? You’ll know very quickly.
Ask his/her head coach. You’re not paying the coach, this is a person who has watched your child play countless hours of basketball. They have no agenda or motive to tell you anything but the truth. Ask their coach.
If you ask the person you are handing a $500 check to you get what you deserve as they say. We live in a part of the country with the very best prep programs in the country, two elite Division II programs in our home state and an NCAA tournament Division III program in Keene. If you want the truth about where your child ranks, free of charge, you’ll get it quite easily.
In regards to #3)
This is simple. You find a program that plays a ton of games and send them there. The Spartans for example are a perfect spot if this is what you are looking for. They play a lot of games and your child will be getting exercise.
Without referencing any program in particular, the biggest complaint coaches have about some AAU programs is the kids basically are trading baskets running up and down the floor. Kids do not compete at the appropriate level because they are so used to playing four games a day and have to save their energy to do that. So they go half speed as does the kid guarding them. Who is this making better?
If they sit in a 2-3 zone all summer they don’t learn the principles of defense and that is where they come in behind in the winter. Again…to beat the point home…there are good AAU programs and bad. I have seen Miguel Gonzalez work with kids first hand with the Rivals program and he is excellent. Go watch Pelham play and ask Matt Regan about his principles and philosophies at Next Level Hoops. Ask parents that have come from other programs to that program and find out what they have to say. They rave about his insistence on development first.
Understand that for most programs the goal is to bring in as many players as they can to take in as much revenue as possible. If you take your best team and put them in the highest AAU tournament division with players that are going to Kentucky, Louisville and Duke next year they are going to go 0-5. If you put them in the second division there is a good chance they don’t fare any better. How does that make your program look? Isn’t it easier to sell to parents that you went to the final four in the fourth level division?
I want to share a quote from Golden State Warriors head coach and 5-time NBA champion Steve Kerr on AAU Basketball:
‘Even if today's players are incredibly gifted, they grow up in a basketball environment that can only be called counterproductive. AAU basketball has replaced high school ball as the dominant form of development in the teen years. I coached my son's AAU team for three years; it's a genuinely weird subculture. Like everywhere else, you have good coaches and bad coaches, or strong programs and weak ones, but what troubled me was how much winning is devalued in the AAU structure. Teams play game after game after game, sometimes winning or losing four times in one day. Very rarely do teams ever hold a practice. Some programs fly in top players from out of state for a single weekend to join their team. Certain players play for one team in the morning and another one in the afternoon. If mom and dad aren't happy with their son's playing time, they switch club teams and stick him on a different one the following week. The process of growing as a team basketball player — learning how to become part of a whole, how to fit into something bigger than oneself — becomes completely lost within the AAU fabric.’
The most common answer I hear from parents in regards to AAU is that they don’t know any other alternative. When they are told their child is a Division II or Division III player and that never materializes the check has already cleared and they simply more forward.
Take the time to investigate the proper program just as you would any college or prep school. If you simply want your child playing games then it’s easy, a schedule will make the decision for you. But every year I have parents telling me where their child will be playing and six months later they’re not. Every parent wants what is best for their kids and that is why I love the conversations I have with parents. Making the best decision is a big part of that guidance.