What does it take?- high school basketball

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Top national rankings.

https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/39906430/scnext-top-25-final-2023-24-boys-high-school-basketball-rankings


5 VA/DC/MD listed.

Almost all of them are catholic or prep schools.

I don’t see any public schools here.

Yeah, JR dropped out around the end of February.

https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/39609341/scnext-top-25-updated-boys-high-school-basketball-rankings

But what point is this meant to make?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Obviously, height is important in basketball. But on my son's private school team there are a surprising number of very skilled shorter kids on the team. My son is a legit 6-2 (meaning he is about as tall as many basketball recruits in the DMV who claim they are 6-4), and he was taller than all but a few kids on the team last year. Granted, he is not at PVI, but this is a real team. All of these super-skilled little guys are serious AAU players, and most of them them do not play much on varsity, but they are on the varsity. The local publics are loaded with shorter players (say 6-1 and under). Many teams have no size at all, probably because almost all the bigs have been recruited to the private schools.

Isn't it much easier to make most private school basketball teams vs. public school teams? A 3000 student public high school has a lot more kids trying out than a 400 student private school.

Not exactly.

Some will have small class sizes and bad varsity teams.


But MANY recruit like crazy. So many have amazing teams that would destroy most public HS. Sideell, Gonzaga, Bullis, SJC, Occinel, Macnamara, Blue Ridge, Paul6, Eoiscopal, etc….


Even though these school have small classes, they will pull out the best kids from Public school to play their teams.

So if your kid is 14, 6’8 and plays on an EYBL team, they will be at Gonzaga, Bullis, Paul 6 etc. no way they stay in public.

Its hard to make the teams almost everywhere except small publics and no name/small privates. At big publics, they sre competing for 12 spots out of 1500 boys at the school. At the privates, all the spots are taken by recruits. Its amazing to me that people pay to send their kids to these private achools where their kids are shut out of all the sports teams.
More access to extracurriculars is supposed to be a strength of privates!

This right here. I know of a family sending their kid to a large private school that's a basketball powerhouse around here. They have dreams of their kid playing for this powerhouse rather than their local HS, but I don't think they realize it will be nearly impossible to make that team if you're not recruited. This may not be true about the freshman class, but certainly for varsity.

My eighth grade daughter has a few players on her county team who are looking forward to playing for their WCAC school next year. She doesn't have the heart to tell them that girls on her AAU team have already been offered spots on the team.

Ppa premier or Potomac valley?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When do you start training? If your dc did travel basketball in ES and MS then is that a guarantee he will make HS team?

No. It depends on the level of travel and on the level of the HS team. There are a lot of travel teams out there that are just play to play without really good coaching and the kids never progress. Those kids might not make their HS team. Even after t they make the HS team, no guarantee that they will play or make the leap from JV to varsity.

No guarantees. Unless your kid is on Team Takeover or Team Durant, and if they were you wouldn’t be asking the question.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When do you start training? If your dc did travel basketball in ES and MS then is that a guarantee he will make HS team?

My son started training in first grade. Some kids who had basketball dad started as early as K.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:IME, basketball is the one sport that is 'easiest' to start late. All 3 of my kids played/play in high school.

Your high school obviously did not have a competitive basketball team.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:IME, basketball is the one sport that is 'easiest' to start late. All 3 of my kids played/play in high school.

Your high school obviously did not have a competitive basketball team.

Or PP has girls. At my kid’s school, 100 boys showed up for each tryout (9th grade, JV, and Varsity). And there are lots of kids who would like to play but don’t try out. There was a classmate of my son’s who I’d see training at the park every day the summer after 8th grade, but he didn’t try out. I heard he asked a coach the week before tryouts if he had a shot and the coach said no. But they had trouble getting enough girls to field a single team.

And to answer another PP’s question - tons of kids who play AAU never make their HS team.

[Anonymous]

Statistically, a top tier boys' basketball team, especially at one of the prep school powerhouses, is probably the hardest type of high school team to make, especially given the emphasis on recruiting from far and wide . And now you are seeing a pattern of recruiting globally from Europe, China, Africa, etc. for American prep school programs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When do you start training? If your dc did travel basketball in ES and MS then is that a guarantee he will make HS team?

My son started training in first grade. Some kids who had basketball dad started as early as K.

Yep, age 6 is where organized basketball starts in most places.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:IME, basketball is the one sport that is 'easiest' to start late. All 3 of my kids played/play in high school.

Your high school obviously did not have a competitive basketball team.

Or PP has girls. At my kid’s school, 100 boys showed up for each tryout (9th grade, JV, and Varsity). And there are lots of kids who would like to play but don’t try out. There was a classmate of my son’s who I’d see training at the park every day the summer after 8th grade, but he didn’t try out. I heard he asked a coach the week before tryouts if he had a shot and the coach said no. But they had trouble getting enough girls to field a single team.

And to answer another PP’s question - tons of kids who play AAU never make their HS team.

These are similar to the numbers at tryouts on the boys side for our very large public HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Of course it’s possible if a good athlete. This is not some technical sport so a super athlete can do it

Person with zero knowledge of basketball has entered the chat.

It’s always funny how people who know nothing whatsoever about the game say this — presumably because you also have to be very athletic to play it at a high level or maybe because lots of black kids play the game well.

If PP knew anything about the game, they’d know that the spin move that they saw in an NCAA tournament game is one of 10 spin moves that the player has been working on since 4th grade, that each one has a move, a counter, and a counter counter, and that there are dozens of other offensive moves like that that the player knows euro step, pull up, floater, step back, etc.) not to mention all the team plays (press break, transition plays, half court sets, inbound plays in half court, etc.) or the basic skills (dribbling full speed with both hands looking up, crossover, through the legs, behind the back, wrap, taking a charge, guarding a drive, getting downhill while being guarded without fouling, etc.).

But PP doesn’t know any of that, so they say stupid sh!t like “it’s not like it’s a technical game.”

This. My father in his 20’s was a coach at Proviso East of Maywood Illinois in the 60’s, a powerhouse which has sent many to Power 4 and the NBA. He later moved to Proviso West in Hillside where he coached national record track teams before going into business. He was a good coach by any measure but indeed commented on how technical the game had become. He played for Frank McGuire (a bench sitter) and my father’s calling card was to get his guys to simply play hard team defense. A lot of bang for the buck in the 60’s - today just gets a team the absolute bare minimum. DCUM is a forum for progressive wonks who in many cases don’t know sports. The only thing I would add to the poster accurately pointing out the technical nature of the game is the global spread of the game. Over 60 NBA players played for foreign squads in the Olympics (a great thing).