4mercoach

Sounds like a good rule to me. It only effects independent teams during the school year and has no restriction on summer teams. I don't see this as much of an anti-recruiting rule, but more as a rule to curb abuses of organized practice restriction rules. Fall leagues for basketball and baseball are nothing more than a way around preseason practice restrictions. This rule doesn't shut down fall leagues it just keeps them from being abused by coaches looking for ways to get around the rules. Basically it has become an unwritten rule in some schools that if you don't play in the fall leagues that you aren't going to play. By splitting up the players this will give coaches less incentive to mandate play in such leagues because he or she will not be able to run the fall league team as a shadow program in the off-season. Kids that want to play and get better will play and some other kids might participate in other sports if they don't feel like they are going to be missing out on a team function in their primary sport and put them behind. The players who choose to play in off-season leagues will probably enjoy the opportunity to play with some different kids without their regular coach hovering over them and the chance to go against some of their teammates in a game setting. In other words the kids that play will be playing for the love of the game not because they have to.

This guy has pretty much hit the nail on the head. 7-AAA is better than last year, but still pretty mediocre overall. BTW the young lady from LHS that was suspended in the Riverdale game is Crystal Howse, a good kid, and Jasmine Brooks was the one that blew out her knee. Tough breaks for the Devilettes with Shelbyville looming.

What happened to Lebanon tonight? I was expecting this to be a very close ball game. siegel seems to be playing very well right now, but I am still surprised that they won by such a large margin against a Lebanon team that had played Mt. Juliet down to the wire last weekend.

It is not the same Coach Brown. Bobby Brown is the football coach.

Cookeville always plays that kind of defense. The amount of points given up is always the best indicator of great defense. A fast tempo team like Mt. Juliet will give up more points because they will have more possessions in their games. Teams that play at slower tempos may not give up a lot of points simply because they don't allow the opponent a lot of possession, which is a smart strategy if that is what suits your personnel.

Lebanon is much improved and they have been competitive against everyone, but they have not yet killed any giants. White County is not a giant and their 2 overtime wins against them are the Devilettes best wins. Maybe they will beat one of the top 4 this time around. The amazing thing about Lebanon to me is not their defense, which wasn't all that bad last year under Coach Dilligard, but their tremendous improvement on offense. They still don't score great, but they don't kill themselves with 25-30 turnovers a game like they did the last couple of years. Their defense looked bad last year because they gave up so many easy baskets off of turnovers. Hats off to Coach Brown.

Quote # 1- We have no disagreement here. You have made my point Quote #2- No duh! Of course they are better than an ordinary high school team because they recruit the best players to be on the teams. Some high schools, it seems, use AAU connections to get transfers to bolster their local talent (a reason some coaches may discourage their best players from participateing in AAU), but most schools simply have to develop the talent pool available. Quote #3- Where did you get the idea that I think only the big-time schools are at AAU tournaments? College coaches at any level would be stupid not to take advantage of the opportunity to see the collection of talent gathered at one place over a short period of time. It is a tremendous convenience for them. My whole point, and this will be my last word on the matter, is that Warren County will not get better unless it develops its players through its feeders and its high school program. AAU will help kids showcase their talents and sharpen them once they have been developed. AAU is a supplement to a solid program not a starting point. BTW I am surprised they played Blackman as close as they did after the crushing defeat at White County. Shows they still have some fight left in them.

These players are not made by AAU. Good players are probably going to be playing AAU for the competition and to showcase their talent, but they are not made to be players by AAU. If you asked these players where that got most of their skill development and training they would, I suspect, attribute it to their high school and jr. high coaches or from individual camps or lessons. I don't have a problem with AAU ball, but it is not a player development program, but a talent showcase. If you are not developing your players tthrough you feeders and high school program AAU will not do it for you. AAU is a supplement to a solid program not its core.

When you are getting beat regularly by 30-50 points players 1-6 must not be very good and therefore they won't be playing on the best AAU squads. I also thought all the players on a team mattered. If players 7-12 are terrible it makes it difficult to push players 1-6 in practice and when you get into games you quite often ar going to need players to substitute in for players that are in foul trouble, injured, or sick. Randall and Reese were invited to play in Murfreesboro because they could already play well and I am sure that it did help them, but it didn't make them as players. AAU can be a supplement to your program as it develops, but it is not the core that makes a program. Mt. Juliet doesn't place a lot of emphasis on AAU and they have as consistent a program as anyone in the state. They may have girls that play AAU, but it isn't pushed by Coach Fryer as far as I know. The key to their program is their feeder system. One other story that relate to this is former Vanderbilt star Matt Freije. Before his senior season his coach encouraged him not to play AAU ball that summer because he felt he could develop his skills more by getting in the gym and doing individual workouts than by playing the AAU all-star circuit. Freije seems to have done pretty well inspite of missing out on AAU.

Wow! What happened to this thread? Can we get back to basketball and leave the investigation of posters identities out? I think maybe there is an CoachInvestigation.com for this type of stuff so take it there.

You don't necessarily get better just because you are playing more. I've seen kids that play alot, but don't improve because they don't work on weaknesses in their game or develop other aspects of their game. Doug Keil improved the boys program at WC by developing the talent available with individual workouts and team development in the off-season. I don't think he depended on AAU to develop his players and I don't think the WC girls should either unless you just have an incompetent or lazy coaching staff and if that is the case you are on a sinking ship anyway. Nothing against the showcasing of talent AAU provides, but it is not the backbone of a consistent high school basketball program. Consistent programs have good feeder systems and solid coaching staffs that can coach up the talent available. I don't think Grandstaff, Odom, and Burt depend on AAU to develop the skills of their players, but use it as a tool to supplement their programs.

Lebanon seems to be backsliding a bit in their offensive production scoring only 27 and 30 respectively in games against Cookeville and Gallatin on Friday and Saturday. I will be surprised if Riverdale doesn't win by 20+ points. I don't think Lebanon can stop Riverdale from scoring and I don't believe the Lebanon scoring problems will get any better against Riverdale. Blackman will beat Warren County easily. Siegel will take care of White County without much difficulty. Siegel doesn't have a great record, but they have played a very tough schedule and have been competitive. White County on the other hand is improving, but still has a ways to go before they are a real contender. Oakland and Cookeville are both kind of mysteries and I consider this one to be a toss-up, but I will pick the Lady Cavs since it is at Cookeville.

The college coaches are there to recruit the all-star players that have been assembled for these teams because it saves them a lot of time in finding talent and evaluating it. AAU is a showcase of talent not a player development system. Playing against other all-stars can help those players raise their level of play. However, if you think AAU will help a down-trodden program, whose players most likely will not be candidates for these teams, resurrect itself you are wrong, unless you intend to go recruit some of the AAU all-stars to your school.

Same thing happened to Columbia a few years back with White County winning the championship after having lost to Columbia 3 times before the final. It is really a crazy system, but it's what we have to live with for now.

I'm sorry, but I really don't buy into all this AAU stuff for developing players. If there is cooperation with the middle school programs players should be developing proper fundamentals long before they get to high school. If there is a quality coach at the high school players should be able to develop without private lessons or AAU. AAU essentially is a tool to expose the all-star type players to the highest level of competition, which is good for those players to push them and let them see how they stack up with other outstanding players, but from what I have seen AAU is more about assembling the best talent rather than developing talent. The really good players aren't made that way by playing AAU ball, they are playing AAU ball because they are already good and are recruited to play for these teams. Warren County has been competitive in the not too distant past and I don't think AAU is the answer to their problems. When they get better AAU will find their players.