Tuesday, June 29, 2004

The Summer AAU Circuit

You hear a lot of negative things about the AAU circuit - the money, the corruption, etc. This article tries to counter those things, and has quotes from our own Coach Hewitt:

In 2002, the NCAA barred contact between summer coaches and college coaches at camps. But the contact is too pivotal for college coaches to abandon their summer-league peers altogether.

Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt has maintained close relationships for more than a decade with influential summer coaches such as the Celtics' Wallace Prather, who coached NBA-bound Dwight Howard, and Team Georgia's Al Outlaw, who coached Shareef Abdur-Rahim of the Portland Trail Blazers.

"I've never had a problem at all," Hewitt said. "The only time you hear about these guys is when something is negative. The positives far outweigh the negatives. I don't think there's a danger either way. There are rules, and you have to play by them."