I arrived about an hour before the last two home games and found a curious practice dimension. Practicing and getting high fives for uncontested dunks seems to be an important part of the warm up for those able to or aspiring to dunk. I saw no one shooting repeatedly from their spot or spots on the floor, no free throws, and no one, except Campbell and Setty bless their hearts who also dunked flamboyantly, practicing jump hooks, drop steps, or other moves around the basket. I may never figure out what is so impressive about tall guys dunking when no one is guarding them, and if that’s what’s important to these guys, I’m sorry to say, Saul has his work cut out for him.

We are 118th in the nation in % of fg's as 3pters so not nearly as crazy as you made it sound, but Bean and Tony are the only guys even shooting above 33% on 3s on the whole team. That's not ideal.

I also get there over an hour before tip and I must not be watching close enough but they seem focused in their warm ups, taking appropriate shots, etc. There may be some dunks but from where sit it seems that doesn't dominate the warm ups.

borna is right about the dunks, although sometimes it is appropriate in certain game situations. But I remember KVK said, "I've got other things to do." When I first started watching college basketball, it was during the Lew Alcindor era and dunks were outlawed. He himself says it helped him develop, and
Coach Wooden agreed.

Dunking gets the crowd excited far more than it wins games.

The conversation about winners is an interesting one when it comes to recruiting. Ideally, yes that's what we'd want, but when you start recruiting kids as soph's and juniors, how do you work with that as a criterion for recruiting?

Regardless of the quality of the program, Dozier, in terms of demonstrating maturity, and being well spoken, is an impressive young man.

I'm not as familiar with HS hoops as most are, so I'm not sure which programs are typically successful and which aren't. That said, I feel like a couple kids on the current team have come from that type of background. Perhaps I'm wrong.

borna, thanks for the post. I think you offer great insight, which to most on this board puts a new perspective on things. I'll be looking for recruits with "rings on their fingers" and high basketball IQs.

Less important to who? In what ways? What is becoming more important about AAU/non-school programs?

I agree with the premise Van but that Assult program is rife with problem children and good kids as well. If you had the time to go through and look at the individuals I would bet looking at say....Mike beasley and his background vs Keith Bogans and his background you would see that the HS coaches of the kids who were high character guys and team players were nurtured by their HS programs. That 07 version of the Assult was one of the most suspect AAU teams I hae ever seen...they made D1 Greyhounds look a bit like choirboys. In a year with JJ Hixson and WorldWide Renegades, Oakland Soldiers in their Camo Unis, Eric Gordon and Derrick Rose playing together on Chicago Meanstreets the Assult was the one that fought within themselves, showed out with cutesy plays that blew up in their face and had the most audacious behaviours in pregame. I long suspected they probably had the most non qualifiers of anyone on the cicuit that year. Pretty wild when you look at behaviours in the 07 class ranging from Kevin Love to OJ Mayo (who was older than Greg Oden BTW).

While I agree with you that the DC area is building up AAU, I do not think the wealth of schools that are turning out great kids ranging from Dematha to a number of others (and no I am not a fan of Oak Hill as I neer thought they should be counted as a true HS)is still the place where kids are nurtured and taught the game the right way.

OUCountry.....If you do not follow HS nationwide one of the best places to learn is to just look at the USA today daily and skim the scores. They historically have had state by state summaries that you will see the dominant program names pop up regualrly.