Some thoughts on the outstanding talent and excellent games we saw in Anaheim this past week.

Mater Dei Girls – very very good. Possibly the best high school girls’ team I have ever seen.   No doubt the top team in the country.

Long Beach Poly Boys – very very good.  Could beat any team in the country.  As good as any of the best teams I saw during my 10 years in Indianapolis (Think Greg Oden and Mike Conley on the same team, or Jared Jeffries and Sean May).

It is becoming more obvious to us that the ability to train your muscles to receive and repeat very hard bounces, with high force applied to the ball, is a ball-handling skill that must be developed.  We will be reporting average force as part of our metrics moving forward on ball-handling skill tests.

Young players still need to grasp the importance of shot speed.  We witnessed some very good, accurate shooters, that simply shot the ball too slowly to be successful in college.  Young players need to realize that they need to practice at game speed when working on their shooting.  Any shot speed above .80 seconds from catch to release is in the zone of being too slow unless the player is 6’6” or taller for boys or 5’11”+ for girls.   Height can provide additional shot time, but only if the defender is smaller.  Speed plus accuracy is never bad.  In Cali, we saw a lot of accuracy, but only a few really quick release speeds.

I really like the talent pool and quality of coaching that I saw during the action.  It was as good as it gets anywhere in the country.  The primary disappointment was the fan support.   The most fans I saw at any game maybe topped 4,000.  In most games it was between 2,000-3,000.   Being  from the Indiana, this was less than what I was accustomed to seeing.    The level of play was excellent and these players deserved to play to a full house.   Or at least ¾ full house.!

Overall a great week.  Congrats again to our champions and to all of the CIF-SS team champions.  Good luck this coming week at states.

Now – On to Houston for the Men’s Final Four at the end of the month!