Picking an AAU Team

This is the time of the year that you'll see some AAU coaches/directors start to linger around high school games. Some get the ball rolling early and are around all season. Just like with picking a college, there are many things that need to be looked at when picking an AAU team.  I am strictly talking about players that want to play in college when it comes to picking the correct AAU team/program.

Most if not all guys that play AAU think they are or want to be Division One basketball players. If you think you are a D1 player, you HAVE to play during the Division One Live Periods. A Live Period is when Division One coaches are allowed to watch travel basketball and evaluate prospects. The Live Periods this year are April 10-12, April 24-26, July 8-12, July 15-19, and July 22-26. It is very important that you are playing in tournaments during those weekends to be seen.

Division Two and Division Three coaches have a much different recruiting calendar. They are allowed to see prospects almost all the time. I'm not as familiar with the D2 coaches but they certainly aren't as restricted as the D1 coaches. There are no dead periods for D3 coaches. They can be out ALL THE TIME.

Last thing when it comes to what tournaments the team plays in is, you want college coaches to see you play when you are fresh. Both Nike and adidas have structured their travel team schedules with guys only playing three or four games a weekend. It's brilliant thinking. The Upper Midwest has done the same thing with their Sanford Pentagon Series. If you are tired (your body especially), you will not be your best and you want coaches to see you at your best. Simply put, four games is MUCH better than seven or eight games every weekend.

Playing at a high level is important. You want to be able to play against other good players on a consistent basis. By playing on a program's second team (generally speaking) doesn't allow you to do that. Yes, there are some programs that have very good second teams but make sure to look at the schedules of each team to see which is the top team and which is the second team, especially if the program directors tell you the "teams are equal." Top teams will generally travel a bit more and/or play in slightly better tournaments.

It's important to have a plan in place for each individual player's development. Ideally, you want to be able to play a position that you will in college. Practice time is generally limited so it's extremely important that practice has some type of skill development in it. It can't just be scrimmaging. Communication with high school coaches on what their thoughts on the player's development is something that is forgotten at times (it's a two-way street).

You want to be on a good team. Good teams go further in tournaments (yes, I know I'm not a huge fan of tournaments but everyone still plays in them) and the further the team goes, the better chance of college coaches see that team. Asking who else is on the team is important. You don't want to play with guys/girls that aren't very good or don't have the same goals as you. Continuity on the roster is important as well. You don't want to have a new roster every weekend and ideally the roster only changes one to three guys every year.

Winning at the expense of development is an interesting concept (much like youth travel basketball). The reason I say this is because A LOT of travel teams will play zone. They play zone because a lot of the players play with different defensive concepts and zone is easy to teach and just about all HS programs teach it the same way. I know when I coached in college it was important to see how players moved side to side on defense. On top of that, with the exception of Syracuse, how many college programs exclusively play zone? Some zone isn't bad, but all zone isn't what you want.

Cost is important for just about all families. Programs will range from $800-$2500 and sometimes more. Some programs don't charge or charge very little and that is usually for the programs with the sneaker affiliations.  There are times with the "sneaker affiliated programs" to charge a way more money to the kids that aren't on their top team in order to fill the gap because their top team is barely paying anything at all. Your son or daughter is paying to have "_________" across his/her chest and it doesn't mean that much. All these programs make money for their coaches/directors, you don't want to be the sacrificial pawn in their money making machine. Which program gives you the best bang for your buck?

Last thing I will talk about is what I think is the most important. Obviously, you want exposure to college coaches but you WANT to be exposed as a player. You want to get beat on defense, you want to miss shots around the basket, you want to struggle from 3, you want to get matched up against someone much better than you, you want to be dominated physically, and you want to get benched. Why????? Because you need to get better and you need to get stronger. And you need to figure how what works and what doesn't work against better players.

Can the team that you picked expose you to all of this? I hope so.