wheelhouse

I've seen him at the 1 or the 2 depending on who else (particularly Green) is on the floor. If I recall correctly, this past frosh season he usually defended other teams' PGs regardless of which position he himself was playing at the time.

It's Brolley.

I hate to string you along but what the heck -- it's all in good fun. Think hard. You've forgotten one player from that group.

Speaking of unknown, one of the other Holmes freshmen has already gotten a D2 look.

Well, I'm a big enough guy to admit a mistake and that part of my post obviously involved a mistake. Thanks for setting the record straight, and best of luck to all!

I hope the chatterers on this thread are reading Big Fundamental's and spindoc's most recent posts carefully and taking them to heart. The "my team can beat your team" approach doesn't help anyone -- particularly when, as BF just pointed out, it consists of speculation without a head-to-head contest. Consider the following points (and disagree with them if you like): 1. AAU rosters are fluid to say the least. Next year's Magic or Team Manimal may have nothing in common with this year's team beyond the uniforms, and kids who are playing against each other this week may be teammates by the time Nationals roll around. Hollering about "your team" might make sense if your kid is on the same team for years on end and the players around him don't shift that much either. Emphasis on the "might".... 2. I have this next statement directly from a local university's basketball coach: they aren't looking at teams so much as individual players. This coach said flat out said that he almost never bases his opinion on whether a kid's team is winning or losing a particular game; they typically know who they're there to evaluate, and they simply want to see whether that prospect is a "go-to guy" on whatever team he plays for. I don't think any BGP veterans are surprised by this. 3. A little perspective: let us assume there is a Magic-Manimal matchup. Once the game is over and the winning team's parents are done crowing, we can bus both teams straight up to Detroit or Chicago and watch them both get clobbered by 25 points. And why is that other team running up the score? Because they themselves just lost by 30 points to DC Assault or Meanstreets or whomever. This is not meant to denigrate our local scene, but we should call it what it is -- a local scene, and a nice one, where we tend to be familiar with most of the players and coaches. We should appreciate the talent we have, celebrate the KY hoopsters who occasionally make it onto the bigger stage, and quit going at one another like we are somehow the ones out on the court. It's bad karma. ....stepping out of pulpit....

Only two teams per pool -- doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of pool play? IMHO, that tournament is way too crowded.

I've always been confused by the term "open gym." These workouts seem to be by invitation or selection, which I guess could be considered "open" in the sense that it's not restricted to one school. How did this particular group of NoKY players end up at this particular workout?

I do not know who's who for Hoop Dreams but they apparently beat the Cincy Lakers U15 team by a large margin this weekend. The other team in that pool -- out of Indiana, I believe -- was also pretty hard core, and my impression on Sunday was that the Lakers didn't make it out of their pool. I literally cannot remember the last time that occurred.

Plenty perspicacious and potentially parsimonious point, pal -- yet passably palatable. Pow!

Lighten up, friend! I never said the kid was breaking any rules and I certainly never implied he is not a superior player -- in fact, I went out of my way to say otherwise. I was simply offering some information for folks who, by sheer chance, may only get to see Cumberland play once or twice and may only get to see him play against some biologically younger kids.

According to one of Cumberland's former AAU teammates he is 17 years old due to being held back twice. Not to say he isn't an exceptional player, but if that account is accurate it should be considered when comparing him to the rest of the pack.

In addition to whichever NoKY teams may be playing, I am pretty sure a couple of Cincinnati (and parts north) AAU teams with NoKY players on their rosters will be at the Bearcat this weekend. Should be a pretty decent field.

Actually, it sounds like we pretty much agree on all the major material. I thought -- maybe mistakenly -- that you were suggesting that it doesn't matter *whic*h AAU team a kid plays for as long as he gets seen, and my point was that some AAU teams don't get seen that much. But I appreciate your position a lot more since I just visited my first "showcase" event a couple of weeks ago: not all teams or players be on the big stage, so whatever exposure they do get is good.

Please be careful with blanket statements such as, "all studies show that...." In this case, it is not quite so. While several studies suggest that retention, a.k.a. holding a student back, can improve students' standardized test scores, some of the same studies indicate that hold-back students tend to drop out of high school at a higher rate than those who are not held back. Questions have also emerged regarding other factors and whether they might have as much to do with a student's success as the retention itself. For instance, it is not clear whether hold-back students who succeed do so solely because they were held back, or whether the socioeconomic groups that tend to practice voluntary retention also do several other things that produce successful students. I am not necessarily disagreeing with you, but research on this topic is ongoing and a clear answer hasn't emerged yet. In the meantime, I think we all agree that holding a student back for the sake of athletics is a different matter than doing it for the sake of academics or emotional maturity.

I'm 100% with Leatherneck! Many of us like the idea of a daughter or son (or niece or nephew) being on a strong team, but hopefully our main focus is the kid's growth as a player and person. When players and programs embrace the transfer-turnstile mentality in order to dominate a region, the kids who stick around and play it by the book get the short end of the stick -- even though the team "improves" on paper.

Okay, we may have covered every angle of the McClendon transfer by now. A while back one BGP veteran claimed that another top-shelf player was likely to transfer to Holmes with the goal of playing next year. Without violating any confidences, does anyone have an update on that situation?

Not appropriate BGP material, but I believe Poetter is no longer at Holmes and do not know where or if he's attending school. The fifth starter you mentioned would have been Walt Takke (sp?) -- he and Fred Conrad ended up getting more clock than Brolley due to size and experience, but Conrad is now at Lloyd and I am not sure where Takke is. The coach would have been Bennie Rice. To bring things back to the Markel McClendon thread: if he plays for Holmes this year or next year, the only teammates with whom he would already have played school ball would be Covington, Bolden, and Brolley. Green may have played AAU ball with McClendon as Legends teammates. I think that would be it for player continuity.

Boy howdy, Walter, I'd need a scorecard and some homing devices for this one. Here's my best effort: McClendon and Brolley each played for the Legends but at different times. Moore, Brolley, Englemon, and Green played together and separately with the Legends in several different incarnations. Green and Brolley each played briefly for the Celtics but not simultaneously. At one point Poetter and Covington were with the Celtics and actually played at least one league game against a Legends team that had Brolley, Englemon, and Green on it. As is often the case, I might have missed something. One thing I do recall clearly is that the opening day lineup for the seventh grade Holmes team three or four years ago -- in alpha order -- was Bolden, Brolley, Covington, McClendon, Poetter. I remember the roster shifting around a lot during that season but those five were in it.

Ian Brolley also played up that year, so he is the one current freshman who has played Holmes ball with McClendon.

[delete]

I absolutely understand and respect your point. However, if by "it" you mean which player plays on which team, I humbly suggest that "it" does really matter for at least two reasons: 1. Regardless of how many sanctioned tournaments a team plays, if a player doesn't see much of the floor then it is, as you aptly put it, an uphill battle. Sure, the true elite squads and their players are on everyone's radar, but many mid-pack AAU teams only attend one or two exposure events per season. For every Bolden, Hatton, or Hawkins there's a kid towards the center of the bench at the [fill in the name] Classic, looking wistfully at the coach from Kentucky State or Sinclair. 2. I work with college students on a daily basis and many of them are still struggling with their big-picture skills, both academically and vocationally. Most high school students have developed even fewer critical thinking chops; it's perfectly likely that a fifteen-year-old baller's ego would keep him on a low-exposure team without consideration of the long-term consequences, just so he can feel like a star. Again, this is not a comment about Green or the KY Players or any other particular player or team. Just an observation on basketball and human nature.

Don't know about summer basketball for the varsity Bulldogs, but here's an entertaining piece of information: this spring, Englemon, Chames, and Costen are reportedly playing BASEBALL for Holmes, or at least trying. If Quinton can connect, I would imagine that ball's gonna go a long way....

Good point, and I should probably back-pedal and stress that there's no judgment attached. I don't think any one of us can presume to know all of a family's reasons for these choices. However, the question put to us by the moderator -- although a little tongue in cheek -- was whether athletics was "playing a part" in the decision, not whether it was the only factor guiding the decision and not whether it was justifiable or not. The simple and, I believe, accurate answer is that athletics is a factor in the decision. Not the only factor. Not necessarily an unwarranted factor. But definitely a factor.

By golly, I do believe athletics may play a part in this decision. I also believe that the question regarding the family's means, desire, and so forth may have been slightly disingenuous: if a family chooses schools based on whether a coach stays or goes, it's either a heck of a coincidence or it's, well....