The NCAA, at this point, is just AAU ball played in front of cheerleaders and TV cameras.
And folks willing to shell out big bucks to watch it live.
I have been thinking about this for a week. What is AAU basketball in your mind? Have you been to a lot of AAU tournaments? Would you be able to sit at a table with Bill Self, Hubert Davis or even Jeff Boals and make that case? How does that statement track to those coaches who game plan, watch hours of film, and review the scouting report with their assistants and players? Even at the High School level, there is advanced scouting and game planning that does not seem to correlate with what the term AAU ball connotes.
It is absolutely staggering to hear fans' opinions and try and figure out how they come to see basketball in such finite terms. The statement above makes me want to go find a weekend of AAU games and see if what you have commented on and observed is close to what we see as we watch games in the Convo.
I haven't been to an AAU tournament since I played in them myself in the late 90s. Obviously the level of coaching and game planning is on two different levels as you alluded above.
What has changed in NCAA, to reflect AAU ball, is the "It's all about me and my brand" mentality where the team/university you play for is nothing more than finding a stepping stone or opportunity to "showcase my talent so I can get recognized by the next level". In AAU it's all about getting in front of eyes of NCAA coaches. In NCAA it's all about getting in front of TV cameras and eyes of NBA scouts.
It was around my time that AAU ball started to take over from actual HS sports as the most important way to get recognized. Nobody cared what HS or program you came from. Shoot, don't even play for your HS if you don't want to (though that's generally a bad character look). All that mattered was getting on that big AAU team and traveling all summer.
This inevitably leads to players hopping and jumping from team to team (university to university) every year in search of that better platform for themselves - and therefore every team (university now) has to be rebuilt (re-recruited) from the ground up every single season. There is no comradery, there is no continuity, there is no culture, there is no team building. Honestly there is no TEAM. It's just a collection of individuals vying to "get theirs". There's no time to establish any of that - and what little there might be is strictly due to the name recognition/success of the current coach based on their ability to showcase their guys talents and get them to the next level (see paragraph above).
It's also rife with teams bringing in coaches/assistants in order to land that player (recruit now) - see: Sears, Mark. Considering how that all went down I'm 95% sure Sears never comes to Athens without Lee Martin on our staff. That's an AAU move that usually comes with guaranteed minutes/starts/chances to showcase.
Further, it's rife with exchange of...."goods"....to entice guys to certain teams. Now, with NIL payments, the NCAA teams can just full on hire the AAU guys who've been doing it under the table for years to now go legally find deals, donors and dollars for the ballers.
Those programs willing to bend their every whim and standard to hire the "right" assistants and the "right" promoters/managers, and embrace re-recruiting the entire team every season to help the guys move up and out - are those that will prosper - just like in AAU.
This is why I keep saying this is now big-time, pay-for-play, basketball. No more of this academics, or student athlete nonsense. Not if you want to compete. If it weren't for the crazy $$ the NCAA is making on basketball, my guess is they'd go the way of the dodo bird, just like HS basketball has, in favor of some college version of AAU / G-League hybrid.
In that sense. It's exactly like AAU ball.
Last Edited: 4/10/2022 10:05:23 PM by GraffZ06