Hoopmania

Yes, a Nike program whose name will go unmentioned that was the event organizer failed to get the paperwork in to the NCAA in a proper or timely fashion as I understand it. It was a heavyweight Nike program, but obviously their mistake made it a less than desirable situation for Nike. Nike has been working to place their impacted programs in a suitable NCAA certified event based on region and other factors. For instance the Travelers (16U & 17U) are attending the Best of the South live event held in the Atlanta area at the Suwanee Sports Academy.

 

This is the facility and event organizer where the Nike Memorial Day Classic is held each year. It is also 4 miles from North Gwinnett High School where the Adidas Uprising Gauntlet Finals are being held with the Top 16 Adidas teams from the 16U & 17U Adidas Gauntlet. Since the events are being held nearby and over the same period it worked out pretty well as to compared to what could have been a disaster as pointed out. It will not be a Nike exclusive event as the EYI was intended, but this event had over 120 teams from solid grassroots programs last year and is said to be growing.

 

It is a case of taking the lemon and making lemonade. Not sure if any other KY based team is going there or not.

Yeah I believe that's where we will be as well. Only 16 Adidas teams are invited to Atlanta per age group? Where will the rest of the Adidas teams going?

They aren't having it.

Pippen is the most disrespected player of all time. The second best perimeter player in the league when the Bulls were winning titles and nobody ever talks about him. There was a reason why Jordan won all of those all defensive titles. Pippen guarded Glen Rice, Dominique Wilkins, Barkley in his Sixers days, Penny Hardaway, Larry Nance, etc. He couldn't guard Magic because that would have placed Jordan on Worthy. Same with Drexler and Jerome Kersey. Jordan is great and arguably the best all time, but none of these titles are won without Pippen.

There are 5 Adidas teams in North Carolina alone.

 

What Adidas did this year was give small deals to a lot of programs to see who they wanted to invest in for a longer term. There are something like 65 programs in the Adidas Gauntlet this year. Next year they will be scaling back to 30-40 and the model will be similar to the EYBL with more Gauntlet events.

5?

Garner Road, Wall, and Loaded. Who am I missing?

But that makes sense what Adidas was doing. I am not as familiar with Adidas and wondered if that was going to be their strategy to compete with the other circuits.

I don't find this to be true at all. If the Travelers had the pick of any kids in the state every year they'd make peach jam every year. They don't have either of the arguably best two players in the state, Quentin Goodin or Eli Wright, and they have still won 4 games. You don't think they find a way to win 4 more with those two?

 

The problem isn't a lack of talent, the problem is a bad ratio of high level AAU teams with not enough talent to fill them all. Kentucky on average produces about 10-15 D1 kids a year, yet we have three shoe sponsored teams currently. If Hoop Dreams or the Louisville Magic or whoever had the best players in Kentucky on a team they'd be a threat nationally as an AAU program every year.

The reality is that this is the case with every state. I have moved down to North Carolina and there are 7 shoe company teams. Granted that is a talent rich state when it comes to basketball, but the situation is the same. All of the teams are getting watered down with the addition of the Under Armour circuit and Adidas adding a million teams to their circuit.

It's quite funny that doubletake continually throws jabs at coach Q and Hoop Dreams, when his team is basically ranked 50 out of 50. Sorry guys. I have no dog in this fight. But I watch the superiority talk on here and that just struck me as funny. You should worry more about your Travelers than you do Coach Q's Hoop Dreams.

Updated standings has them tied for 26th.

I am obviously not in tune with the real job today, so blame the frequent posts on being bored and anxious for a big weekend of basketball coming up.

 

For illustrative value, I am going to use Coach Q's post and the solid performance last year for the 16U Hoops Dream team at the Nike Memorial Day Classic to put things in perspective with how dominating many Nike EYBL programs can be.

 

* Last year it was an open Nike event with Nike EYBL programs and many of the best non-Nike teams like the 16U Hoop Dreams competing in the same open division. This year will be separated due to 16U EYBL changes made. I feel Coach Q will vouch that the HD 16U team of last year was one of the best in their program and became the nucleus of their very good 17U team of this season.

* As Coach Q pointed out, Hoop Dreams 16U (1st in their pool) did beat the Travelers 16U team (2nd in their pool) in 1st round bracket game 49-47.

* I will post link at bottom to the schedule and bracket results, but few (less than a handful) of the 2014/2015 EYBL Nike programs failed to either win their pool or advance into bracket play as a 2nd place team. Several EYBL programs had A & B teams or even 15U teams playing up along with their 16U teams advance into bracket play.

* Hoop Dreams went undefeated in their pool which included one Nike EYBL program team, the 15U St. Louis Eagles who played up an age group which HD beat by 10 points in pool play.

* After 1st round play was completed, 11 Nike EYBL teams advanced to the round of 16 and 5 non-Nike team which included Hoop Dreams

*After the round of 16 play, 7 Nike EYBL programs advanced and one Non-Nike program won to advance. That single non-Nike EYBL teams was Hoop Dreams who beat another non-Nike EYBL team (FL Tarheels) to advance to the quarterfinals

*In the Round of 8 half of those teams (4) came from 2 Nike EYBL programs which were the A & B team from the host program GA Stars, and the 15U & 16U St. Louis Eagles.

* The Final Four or semi-finals were all Nike EYBL program teams as the Hoop Dreams team was eliminated by the GA Stars "B" team that actually went on to play their Elite EYBL team in the finals.

* The Elite GA Stars team beat their "B" team by 20 in the finals, but both of their teams finished 1st & 2nd in the event.

 

My point to all this is that until you really dig beyond the surface, the level of competition faced in Nike EYBL exclusive events is unprecedented. I had no idea myself what to expect until you actually experience it.

 

Schedule

That was actually the 15U A team that finished runner up in the 16U tourney.

NASCAR might be less confusing than this scoring system in the way it produces point totals. With a total of (2) points from two pool wins, your suggestion is that is very close to 50th out of 50. But you also have to take into account that those teams with 0 or 1 point will never get to 2 points if they fail to win pool games. There are 17 teams that played in Hampton or Louisville (some both) that have fewer points than The Travelers. There is an equal number of teams that have more points. That makes their position in the standings pretty much middle of the pack.

 

3 of the 4 losses came to teams that rank in the Top 10 (5th, 7th, & 10th) so the losses came to quality teams that are as good as any in the country. The other loss was a bad loss in overtime in a game that should have been won.

 

If you use 2 points as a guide to being very close to the bottom, that argument holds true for 32 16U EYBL teams being very close to 50th. When Atlanta ends the picture should be more clear as point totals will only account for the best two event performances. The league is brutal and if you are hunting for victories the EYBL is not the league for that.

Did they play m(any) tourneys outside of Nike this year besides AAU state playing up? Like you said, the circuit is brutal.

According to the D1circuit.Com website, the Travelers 16s have only 1 point in the rankings. The leaders have 42. Anyone know how this point system works? Obviously the 16s didn't go to Houston 2 weeks ago because they played AAU state. So were they penalized for that?

 

I notice 50 16u teams ranked. But there are only 40 EYBL teams. This whole thing is a bit confusing.

Basically you get a point for every win. Winning your pool gives you 2 more, winning a first round game gives you 6, semis gives you 10 more and winning it adds like 16. I believe they take your top two tourney results. So not going to all 4 tourneys doesn't hurt you.

As mentioned above, the 16U Travelers are in Atlanta as this event is a 16U EYBL qualifier like the Boo Williams, Spring Takeover (in Louisville) & Houston two weekends ago. What I suspect is there will be a separate 16U division for the teams Nike has identified as their 16U EYBL programs and another 16U open division. I am just guessing based on what Nike is doing to make the 16U EYBL program more exclusive like the 17U is.

 

I have also heard that Sylvester may not be joining Magic now so we will have to see if he stays with Hoopsters or ends up in Chicago after all. Hill will be in Chicago for sure though and will make the 15U team even better.

Correct. There is a EYBL qualifier and a regular 16U tourney for the non Nike teams. This is the last qualifier for Peach Jam. The top 16 16U teams will go to North Augusta in July.

16U Travelers are in Atlanta I believe for EYBL qualifiers.

I am very close with a member of the Team Takeover family. I can guarantee you that they have a large budget and that Under Armour offered them $500,000 per year to switch. Nike didn't exactly match it but they are well taken care of.

 

Keith Stevens of AAU Team Takeover is the new power broker of D.C. area basketball - The Washington Post

 

"Stevens himself could be on the verge of a big payday. He is considering a lucrative sponsorship deal from Under Armour. Two Team Takeover coaches familiar with the situation indicated the Baltimore-based apparel company has offered Stevens more than $500,000 and the resources to create two full-time staff positions within his nonprofit organization."

 

So there you go.

Oh I know Under Armour offered the money. I am just saying that Nike didn't match that. They get money from lots of different places, which include former players, but their allotment (certainly not $35k) isn't drastically different than the other programs. The majority of the kids pay to play. Although he does field both boys and girls. Keith's money is a different situation.

It depends on the program.

 

This article mentions the financials of the Travelers: Club team, Nike reap benefits of sponsorship

 

I know Team Takeover was offered a MASSIVE deal by Under Armour last year to leave Nike but declined. Top teams like that receive hundreds of thousands of dollars. But they also consistently churn out NBA lottery picks.

Takeover also does a great job with their program financially. They host multiple events throughout the year (with one actually being in Puerto Rico this year), and they don't "buy" kids by giving them tons of free stuff. They might not have the same budget, but its not some astronomical number. Definitely not hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Any chance UK gets the guy who was planning to go to NC State?

 

Is there any indication of where the guy who is transferring from Seton Hall will land? Would UK be interested? I understand he will be immediately eligible to play.

Nope he just signed.

While that may have some truth in the Bragg situation, Jarron Cumberland just left OBC and Adidas for Nike and King James.

Correct. So now I don't know if he will go to an Adidas program. Duncan would have tried to encourage him to go Adidas.

Always love this being the reason why UK doesn't get a kid they were heavily interested in. I'm sure Cal wouldn't have taken a commitment from either.

While you are right, I wouldn't expect many high level OBC kids to not go Adidas anymore as long as Mike Duncan is running the program.

I've already seen a lot of comments on Twitter about how Cal offering him is bush-league since he committed to NC State already. Why is there such a double standard about it with regards to basketball compared to football? Seems like in football this happens with almost everyone up until they sign on the dotted line. :idunno: :confused:

It was not public knowledge that Kirk was committed when Cal offered. He had just gotten home from meeting with NC State when UK called. It wasn't like they saw NC State offered so they decided to as well.

No offense to you Coach Q or Hoop Dreams or any other AAU program in the state but if Quentin Goodin and Eli Wright truly believe that not playing in the EYBL is their best option than they were given some bad advice. Plain and simple. I realize that their are other great programs (my son plays for one of them) out their but if you are a top kid in your state/class their is no better option. Especially this year when one of the tournaments is in your own state.

 

Cheers to all the KY AAU programs though!!!! gives kids an opportunity to play at all levels.

I coach in the EYBL and I don't believe that this is true. Best option for what? While the most talent and best teams might be in the EYBL as a whole, there are tons of top players that are doing very well for themselves that never played one minute in the EYBL. College coaches go to all three circuits now and if you perform, you will be seen and recruited. I think there are a lot of people with a false sense of how scouting, rankings, and recruiting works.

16U Travelers went 1-2. Lost to Expressions and Alabama Challenge and beat Houston Hoops. The two teams they lost to are both really good.

Based on what I have seen IMO the top team in KY 16U is the Louisville Magic. But that is only if the big freshman plays 16U.

I do know the 16U Travelers play at 6:15 Friday vs. BABC (Nerlen Noels old program out of Boston), 8:00 Saturday vs. Alabama Challenge and 2:00 PM Saturday vs. Houston Hoops for their pool play games.

Yeah same. I know Team United's schedule but I was just wondering if the schedule was posted for everyone yet.

Alabama challenge is pretty good.

While the 17U Nike EYBL 2nd session is held in Lexington at KBA next weekend, Nike is holding their exclusive 16U EYBL tournament at Hoops in Louisville this same weekend. It is a 32 team tournament format of some of the best 16U teams in the country whose 17U teams are over in Lexington. Great basketball to be seen and as Coach Q points out, this event unlike the Under Armor event has a KY based team playing. The name of the event is the Nike Spring Takeover and games are Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Is the schedule out yet?

I thought Cole was playing up with 17U? Thought I saw someone else mention that in another thread? (Might have been this one)

He played 16U this weekend. Did really well in the game I saw.

How does this team compare to the Louisville Magic?

Team United won the 16u championship over Western Kentucky elite. 8 point game where western Kentucky led almost the whole game.