Tyler Boston has several strikes against him. First, he’s a 5-foot-10 high-schooler without the size to easily get noticed by college recruiters. College basketball coaches, on the other hand, can be picky about high school players because the transfer portal is flooded with older players who have an extra year of pandemic to qualify.
What’s more, when Boston attends high-profile hiring pitches in Atlanta and Las Vegas next month, it’s unclear if he’ll be able to highlight his breadth of skills to college coaches when He will be competing for game time on a talented traveling team. .
Luckily for Boston, he had another stage set this past two weekends — playing against his high school team, the Bullis of Potomac, Md., against some of the best private schools in the playground. basketball is known as DMV (short for Washington area: District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia).
The DMV Live event is among about 50 NCAA-certified events around the country in which college coaches are allowed to evaluate players on their high school teams live. Events range from the June Tournament in Appleton, Wis., to Arizona’s massive Season 7 tournament, in which dozens of fields are set up in a domed NFL stadium, to the League of Legends Show Athletic Union of the New York City Public Schools in Brooklyn.
Over the past two weekends, Boston has demonstrated his mastery of team management, taking out players by 3 points (he made half of his 26 attempts) and defending. intentionally. He received no scholarship more than a week ago, but now his phone is ringing.
Holy Cross offers a scholarship. Then there was the State of East Tennessee, Fordham and Fairfield.
A week later, the University of Pennsylvania said they had a place for him. Robert Morris, Merrimack, Delaware State and Mount St. Mary’s too.
“When they call you, it’s great news,” said Boston, who since ninth grade has been going to school 50 minutes from his home in suburban Baltimore in hopes of playing in college. “I was interested before, but there were no offers. It means hard work pays off. I spent a lot of time in the gym and I’m grateful that everything went as promised.”
Events like DMV Live, for high school teams during live recruiting, are one of the few lasting byproducts of the NCAA reforms that have been promised after the FBI corruption investigation did. rocked the college basketball world nearly six years ago.
A committee, headed by former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, has called for some eye-catching changes, such as the creation of a new process for NCAA investigations, tougher penalties for trainers Coaches who violate rules and post-season bans for up to 5 years, as well as make college freshmen ineligible if the NBA continues to ban players from transferring straight from high school to the professional league. . Only a handful of ideas have been implemented, and even fewer are deadlocked.
A reminder of how it was going last week: The NCAA slapped Will Wade, the McNeese State coach who was fired by Louisiana State last year, with a 10-game suspension and banning him. We recruited off-campus for two years, bowing to an investigation that had dragged on for four years.
Wade’s penalty did not include anything for the “strong offer” he made to an employee and his intention to pay Louisiana State players more than the minimum wage. for the NBA’s rookie, the statements were captured in a wiretapped call first reported by Yahoo and later aired by HBO. The committee that reviewed the case said it needed more evidence.
As it turns out, justice in the corruption scandal lies almost exclusively at the feet of Black assistant coaches, who are quickly fired, sometimes jailed, and excluded from college basketball – unlike the white coaches involved.
What the FBI’s spy cameras and camcorders did was expose the underground economy of college basketball, fueled by money from shoe companies and dealers and orchestrated with the help of the FBI. The controllers guide the players to school. Those middlemen are often associated with shoe company-sponsored touring teams, and over the past 25 years, they’ve largely replaced high school coaches as gatekeepers for recruits.
In its reform drive, the NCAA in 2019 sought to regain influence from Nike, Adidas and Under Armor by reconfiguring its hiring schedule. The 12-day recruitment period in July, when shoe companies host national tournaments, was cut to 6 days. The remaining six days were given to high school teams in June, and NCAA-run camps were added to the recruiting window at the end of July. (A reconfigured NCAA camp will resume this summer – along with a women’s camp – after a three-year pandemic-related hiatus.)
Grumbling about changes from college coaches, who complain of poor talent and disorganization at some tournaments, has given way to acceptance – at least with events like DMV Live, charges college coaches $250 for a package that includes player email addresses and phone numbers.
Benefits include seeing players in a more structured context than a casual game, which is more likely to highlight the individual skills of the player.
The tournament was held in two gyms at DeMatha Catholic High School, which has produced a long line of NBA players, including Adrian Dantley, Victor Oladipo and Jordan Hawkins, who was selected 14th in the batch. last week’s selection of the New Orleans Pelicans.
On Saturday, Hawkins’ coach at the University of Connecticut, Dan Hurley, was at DeMatha in search of the next generation of talent who could help his team, the defending national champion, compete for another title.
“The more tools you have, the more you see them play against different teams, different playing styles, different types of coaches, the more you judge the players,” says Hurley.
Hurley has many companies. Joining him in the main gym are Jerome Tang of Kansas State, Mike Young of Virginia Tech, Kim English of Providence and Micah Shrewsberry of Notre Dame, who have alternated his visits between trips into Friday to Wisconsin and on Sunday to North Carolina. Also present were assistants from Villanova, Virginia, Iowa, Indiana, and North Carolina State, along with dozens of other coaches from mid-level majors and virtually every Ivy League university.
The NCAA’s hand is visible for the length of time events must take to prevent coaches from contacting players. Rows of yellow police tape keep college coaches away from players or their families. The trainer has a private bathroom and access to the gym.
That separation led to some coaches, holding their phones to their ears, waving at a player or parent from across the gym to let them know they were watching.
Some high school coaches say how much influence junior coaches have shrunk is questionable, but high school referrals have spurred greater engagement. between high school and college coaches.
Damin Altizer, coach at St. “College coaches are getting to know the kids better because they talk to the high school coaches more,” says Anne’s-Belfield of Charlottesville, Va.. Deadly shot evokes the top basketball team of the Golden State Warriors.
“How are they after a long day in class and then coming to practice?” he continued. “Obviously, the AAU is valuable because they are getting this great exposure. But high school coaches see them as more of a human, which can’t be overstated how valuable that is because that’s how they’re going to succeed in college.”
The biggest draw for college coaches at DeMatha over the weekend was hosting four games involving Paul VI Catholic High School in Chantilly, Va., home to four of the state’s top four players. , according to recruitment website 247 Sports, led by a 6-foot 11 Striker, Patrick Ngongba II.
Paul VI won four games last weekend, three by winning, but was tested by Bullis on Saturday before winning, 58-53. In that game, Boston, Bullis’s point guard, held his ground. He’s scored 16 points and has six assists – both the highest of the game – and just one flip. His determined play, as one of the tiniest players on the pitch, seems to boost his team — like the pro players he most admires, Jalen Brunson, Damian Lillard and Stephen Curry.
If Boston opened the eyes of some college coaches, perhaps they would learn more. They may learn that his father is a middle school math teacher, his mother works for the federal government, he has a GPA of 3.7 and he plans to major in finance or accounting.
It’s the kind of backdrop that, in the right context, can help him stand out from the crowd.
