Monday, July 9, 2007

Tournament and Fife

The Hoosier Shootout was held this past weekend in Indianapolis. It is the start of the insane month of July for recruiting. College coaches are out in force evaluating players and fighting over the top recruits. July can make or break programs for many years to come.

My freshman to be team played in the event. No college coaches attended any of our games obviously, but I'm sure some scouting services were in attendance. We played well the whole tournament. It was a small, but very talented field. I believe there were 16 teams in our age group. I would say 12 were very tough teams.

We ended up coming in 3rd place in the tournament. We could have been in the championship game very easily. It came down to our inability to handle a full court run n jump defense. The traps were poorly executed and very exploitable but we didn't keep our heads up and realize where the double team was coming from. That literally was the only thing they had to do. They were trapping from straight on which is a horrible way to trap, but when you dribble with your head down you can't see it coming and you are in trouble.

Frustrating to say the least. We were leading the whole game basically until the 4Th quarter. Our effort was very good and I can't always say that. Our defense has improved greatly. I think that was partly because they spent all of June with their high school coaches and I'm sure they were scolded for their defense.

I was heading over to the court where the older team was playing when I heard someone say "hey Trevor" from the college coaches section. It was IPFW head coach Dane Fife. I really didn't think he would remember my name because he wasn't overly involved with the IPFW camp I worked. It was good to know he remembered me. I really built some nice connections in the month of June which I'm very happy about!