Mandatory AAU Basketball Rant: Tournament #6

 It's been three years, and I've grown accustomed to, or I can at least tolerate, some of the lesser evils of AAU: The travel, the questionable roster spots, although certainly not the bad officiating and scorekeeping.  

The one thing I've noticed more than previous years that I don't like (but should expect) is the sudden and abrupt evolution of teams over the month of June.  Spring AAU, from March through Father's Day, holds true to most basic stereotypes.  

Summer AAU transform into weightlifting pyschopaths running the asylum.  

I mention this because because New Heights, the great team out of New York City that fought Millie's team to the brink of double overtime last tournament, returned to Pennsylvania from the Junior Nationals in Hershey.  Looking at the results, I'm a little confused as to what age division they were playing in, or better yet, I was unsure which age division their opponents were supposed to be in.  Teams they had smoked earlier in the season, now apparently blew them out by twenty.  These teams hadn't scored twenty in a game all season, much less beat a team by that much! 

Further inspection, found a host of programs in 6th, 7th, even 8th grade, that were the whipping boys of pool play all spring, and suddenly they're undefeated in pool play and heading to championships.  Perhaps that age restrictions changed, perhaps some talented players for NYC couldn't make the trip.  

Perhaps the summer national season is just meant for a different breed. 

As for Maja and Millie, their 5th and 7th grade teams stayed local at the Black Diamond Tournament in Scranton.

We were a little nostalgic, since it had been three years we had played on the University of Scranton's court, the site of Maja's first ever away tournament.  The results were a little bit better.

For the most part, I can normally run a "Clutch vs the world" mentality, but with the Scranton AAU program hosting the tournament, I can safely call this one "NEPA Elite vs Everybody Else"  

Maja's team started against a team from Massachusetts that simply would not go away (and had far more obnoxious parents than the Mass program that played Millie's team in the previous tourney).  They came away with a 23-18 win.

With an hour break, the team sat and watch the program's B-team simply get dismantled by NEPA Elite's 7th grade team, 77-18.  It honestly wasn't even that close.

With that in mind, the A-team took the court, and kept it respectable against the #3 team in the Mid-Atlantic, only down 27-17 at the half. 

Then the wheels came off and no one, including the coaches knew what to do.  The offense couldn't even get to the three-point line, as presses then simply tough man to man defense generate 10 turnovers from the guards and twenty automatic points.  The few other points finished off a barrage of 7 out of 9 3-pointers the entire game.   

Really, outside of the team's center, who played with the Clutch girls in the fall, the team isn't flashy, isn't showy, just fundamentally sound, hustles, doesn't panic, and knows where they need to be.  

Millie's bracket was a combined 5th/6th, with a very decent chance they would play their friends on the 6th grade team in the championship.  They too had a slow start against a team from Pittsburgh, getting behind as far as 7-1, before charging back and winning 35-23.   The second game was equally grueling at the start, but they put the hammer down and beat the 5th grade version of the Massachusetts program Maja played against, 39-19.  

Sunday put the two teams in peculiar situations.  Millie's team was not the favorite to go the championship game, as the 6th grade Clutch blew out the other teams far worse.  Maja's team ended up 4th out of the five teams in pool play.  Both Massachusetts team and the 7-B team both won in dominant fashion against the  5th seed, a team from Long Island, and with three teams at 1-1, were seeded ahead thanks to Point Differential.  

(It should be noted that the 7-B team played dominant basketball for their second win of the season.)y

Millie's team had a rematch against Pittsburgh for the play-in game and simply could not put them away this time, watching a six point lead dwindle to nothing, and a late flourish preventing yet another trip to overtime. 

The championship game with 6th grade was played with tongue firmly planted in cheek, even with full effort from all the girls.  

When Millie (L) gets to do jump ball, and the "Hype Dads" get a spot on the bench to coach, it was all smiles, even if 6th grade won 43-14.

The 7th grade team from Long Island fared even worse than that, getting dismantled so badly by Maja's team, 44-4, that they simply left for New York rather than playing their guaranteed fourth game, in the consolation bracket.  

A win by Maja's team got them into the semi-finals, where the point differential screwed them again and put them in a rematch against NEPA Elite.  This time there was no valiant 1st half, only a 45-12 thrashing.  

It was no surprise that the Massachusetts team was no match for NEPA, losing 56-20 in the final.  I'm grateful Long Island didn't play NEPA at all, we might have seen in the scoreboard did go over 100.   

That put the Maja's team in an odd predicament.   The loss in the semis put them in the consolation bracket, where Long Island's sudden withdrawal left the last remaining team looking for a fourth guaranteed game, the 7-B team. 

The theme of 7-B's parents sounded a lot like Rodney Dangerfield, "No Respect."  Relegated to the lower team, early confusion over who was the head coach, although there were always two program coaches at practices and the two early tournaments.  When a permanent head coach was found, there were complaints about coaching style, yelling, not teaching the girls plays (even though they partook in all play design with 7-A all season long).  

With a quick merciful end to the championship game, and the Long Island forfeit, the game with 7-B was determined to be played and hour and twenty minutes early (thank God!).  

Only all the 7-A starters were caught off-guard and all ran to the bathroom, letting Maja and the bench start for the first time this season.   7-B was far more motivated and got one quick basket in the first minute.

7-A (black) vs 7-B

From there it just wasn't fair.  Using the NEPA Elite playbook, 7-A simply overwhelmed 7-B's point guards just over the half-court line and scored over... and over ... and over again.  

Final 7-A: 55  7-B: 4.

Fun stat for 7-B, their two 2nd half points came from the only shot of Maja's classmate, Emily who plays significant time on the junior high team.  She rode the bench for most the game, made her shot, and finished the game on the bench.    The vocal parents on 7-B were silenced, we took a collective team picture and got home before dinner for the first time all spring.  

I'm not continuing these rants into the junior high summer league, but our school's program has six Clutch girls (and a host of NEPA B-team players whose season was already finished.)

While the school team trounced the dominant Catholic school team in the area 44-9, both Emily and the other 7-B player, Annika, had dominant performances against competition they had already played against during AAU.  I'm sorry, they rode the bench while the players with the vocal parents got routed.  I have my own thoughts with that team, and without unequal trades for 7-A players, that team probably should not have been formed. 

That all being said, the AAU is effectively over for us, and with the zaniness of the Summer tournaments, it's time to shut down my wildly unofficial Mid-Atlantic Power Rankings for Spring 2022.

I've expanded the rankings up to a Top 20, but even then, a team fell way further than that.