Hoops

Aus camp invitees

ANONYMOUS 788 - yeah, I'm from NSW and you're right, it doesn't take too much insight to identify the talented girls from SA Country - still haven't seen any Metro SA girls. I never accused guards of being murderous or vicious (though there is at least one junior female guard I can think of who fits that bill!), I just said that talls don't get a fair go from the referees. GETSUM is right, the calls do get better as the kids get older, and there's no doubt that the players are better as a result.

Sorry if it seemed like endless bleating - its personal for me because its my little girl but I also understand its always somebody else's little girl.

I'd be fascinated to see that I made such an impact at Albury that anybody who was there would know me!

I will take issue with you about being lucky to play at State level because I think you'll find every single player who has been chosen to represent their state has worked very hard to be selected and luck plays only a minor part in it. In fact, that seems to be an attitude most commonly adopted by players (or more often parents) who have not been selected or not done the hard work.

So fair to say, I feel appropriately chastised and will in future reserve my comments for the people making them rather than the content of what is being said.

Ankles....what state are you from?
I know you have stated you are not from SA, but you have a very decent insight into the SA program and kids, perhaps not in this thread, but certainly reading what you have said over the time....

So much to work with...

606 - I was actually referring to the week I had to sit through - as opposed to the tournament in general. But I think if you have a look at the stats, you'll find the players that dominated the stats (agreed - by and large talls) did not win the tournament!! Yes, they scored well bu their teams finished where? Fourth, sixth and ninth I think!! Leading scorers in winning teams were spread more evenly (funny that). Those talls were also one of one or two focuses for their team and everything went through them. All three have also had opportunities at Australian Camps and those opportunities showed in the standard of their play.

playtime - how easy is team selection going to be from now on! Can you dunk? No? See you later. On that basis I'm a chance of making a comeback!!

beaniebear - development of talls. After much frustration last week I'm starting to think its a lot of work with coaches. Despite the fact that referees give them a hard time, until we get a crop of 6'4 referees, they will continue to try and make the game even rather than fair (you're big, you have an advantage, so we'll give the littles a bit more help to compete - meanwhile, they don't slow down the fast kids or make the good shooters shoot only threes). I saw a classic example of this recently with my daughter who gets pounded every time she gets the ball and every time she tries to establish position on the block - off the ball, on the ball, at halfway in some games, yet when she showed hard on an on-ball and caught the guard with a minor hip (they stayed upright and 'played through it') the contact was immediately called. Yet if the same player that was bumped down the other end gets caught on a switch or a mismatch, two hands in the back, hips pushing in underneath and even, on one occasion, holding a singlet, are all acceptable!

So we can't do too much about them. But we do need to work with coaches who expect the bigs to be able to do everything because they have such an 'advantage' or who so rarely get bigs that they have no idea how to run a team which includes one or more quality bigs. Let the bigs develop their perimeter skills with other bigs, as opposed to making them work on ball-handling against guards. Walk them through the stages of post moves, how to deal with the contact and still finish. Its a huge step from a post-catch, drop step power lay-up unguarded in practice to the same move in a game situation. In a game situation it becomes post-up, protect the ball, keep it away from the guard digging in, read whether the double-team is coming (where is the open player?) turn to the middle, establish contact and feel the d, drop the baseline foot (have I got a seal?) spin hard to the basket (is there weakside help coming - where is the open player?) go up for the score (ready for the contact - absorb the contact) and finish with soft hands. It's a long process to teach all this stuff and frankly most team coaches don't have the time. All the 'fundamentals' we teach in learn to play are perimeter skills so we actually need specific big-player clinics to teach these post and inside skills.

list isn't public yet and I too, hope it has nothing to do with my daughter being tall!

Anon - don't know to whom you are referring but you seem to have a thing against tall players. The two players I am thinking of (I don't even know their names so I couldn't use them if I wanted to - I'm not from SA) are not overly tall (probably 5'10 to 6'0 range) but are quite complete players (or at least as complete as you can be at 14 year of age) and they played with SA Country at the Junior Country Cup.

Methinks maybe you jumped in a bit early assuming I was pushing a particular cause. However, while I'm here. let me defend the 'big' players you seem to have a problem with.

1. Carrie Graf has gone public with her wish to develop players who 'are capable of beating the Americans'. Like it or not, that will entail certain types of athletes and body types.

2. Often these body types are tall. These tall players often take much longer to develop (partly because the game is so guard-dominated at the junior level). They take some time to get the coordination together and the skills and confidence together to play their role most effectively.

3. Like it or not, as a nation we won't compete internationally without a complete line-up of players and that includes talls. As height is the 'thing you cant teach' we need to find these players and nurture them. At the moment we do a shocking job of that. And yes, some of these 'project' players will fall by the wayside. But no more so than the many 5'8 girls who were the stars at U14's but as their 'early-maturers' advantage waned so did their passion and ability in the game.

4. And finally, I find a lot of people place unrealistic expectations on our talls. They expect that they will get every rebound, be first back on defense to block shots, score every shot they take (even though most of them are under much more physical contact than most shots), put up with the physical pounding they get game after game, and also put up with referees allowing much more contact on the talls than they do on smaller players.

So now who's jumping in? Probably me but as the father of a tall daughter who sat through a week of guard-dominated play last week at Gawler, I think the talls get a raw deal.

Yes, its only bottom-age U18 players ('93 birthdays - although I assume there will be a couple of '94 birthdays - there's a couple of very capable girls from SA country who I imagine will be considered strongly) as they will be eligible to compete at the first World 17 and Under tournament next year. It is the first step in the selection process for that group. I believe there are about 24 or 25 invites.