Wildcat Notebook: The peculiar world of AAU basketball

The hilarious, but short-lived HBO sketch comedy program “Mr. Show” hit its creative peak with “The Recruiters.”

The seven-minute sketch featured actors Bob Odenkirk and David Cross as a pair of rival small-time college hoops recruiters who are forced to pursue younger players in order to beat bigger schools to the punch.

LaFonte University’s Carter Blanchard (played by Cross) spends the first half of the sketch trying to woo 5-year-old Will Hawkins. Ty Keenan (played by Odenkirk) represents Indiana Basin Silt College, and he has the same idea.

Keenan attempts to sell Hawkins on his college’s “great 2-year cowboy degree,” but Blanchard one-ups him by telling the Hawkins family that Will “has the potential not only to be a professional basketball player, but president of the United States and a movie star.”

Released in 1995, the sketch was meant to poke fun at the outlandish promises some recruiters make to an increasingly youthful batch of potential basketball stars.

Fast forward 13 years, and the sketch doesn’t seem all that out of touch with reality.

This past week, thousands of prep hoopsters converged on Las Vegas for the summer’s largest youth basketball extravaganza.

Reebok’s Summer Championships is the week’s biggest event, but the Adidas Super 64 and the Vision Sports Main Event attract their fair share of teenage basketball stars hoping to get noticed by the hundreds of college coaches, scouts and recruiters in attendance.

If a player has a breakout week with this many powerful members of the coaching fraternity in attendance, basketball becomes much more than a game. It becomes a future.

Formed in 1888, the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) has evolved into youth basketball’s most well-recognized institution. Roughly 99 out of every 100 top-notch recruits plays AAU basketball in the summer.

On the plus side, it allows the nation’s top players to play against each other in a competitive, visible environment. In addition, it helps coaches get to know some recruits they might have been able to see otherwise.

However, there is a flipside to that coin. With so much pressure to perform at such an early age, it takes a teenager with unusual mental toughness to make it through this process unscathed.

A couple of bad games, and a player’s stock can plummet. Is it fair? No, but that’s the harsh reality.

Of course, a couple of good games can send hyperbole skyrocketing. One of the event’s breakout stars was Seattle’s Tony Wroten. The 15-year-old Wroten has only completed one year of high school, but was one of the Adidas tournament’s most unstoppable scorers.

People are already talking about him as a future NBA star and he hasn’t even completed his driver’s test yet.

The Wildcat influence

Like every major college hoops program, the Arizona Wildcats were represented during the week-long Las Vegas hoops gathering.

New assistant coach Reggie Geary spent countless hours in dozens of high-school gyms throughout the valley in hopes of catching a glimpse of the next great Wildcat recruit.

Recently, GOAZCATS.com reported that Solomon Hill, a four-star forward and No. 26-rated prospect in 2009 by Rivals.com, will be attending Arizona, joining Mike Moser in what is shaping up to be a solid, if unspectacular recruiting class.

Obviously, all of that could change if Abdul Gaddy returns to the fold.

Ranked by nearly every recruiting service as a top-three point guard and top-15 overall recruit, Gaddy and teammate Avery Bradley opened some eyes as the Northwest Panthers took part in a handful of high-profile games at the Reebok event.

Gaddy originally offered his verbal commitment to the Wildcats as a sophomore, but elected to re-open his recruitment after the complete overhaul of Arizona’s coaching staff. His interest in the Wildcats remains high, however.

Outside of the electrifying John Wall, Gaddy was one of the camp’s steadier point guards, consistently looking to set up his teammates. But when he battled some of Reebok’s other elite guards — Wall, Kenny Boynton and Brandon Knight — Gaddy struggled.

He’ll be a senior at Bellarmine Prep in Tacoma, Wash., this season. Added physical and mental maturity should turn Gaddy into an excellent college point guard.

What could’ve been

In previous years, Arizona’s greatest asset in the AAU scene was young assistant coach and recruiting guru Josh Pastner. Few assistants at any school are as plugged into the AAU pipeline.

He left this offseason to join the Memphis Tigers’ coaching staff, and he’s immediately made his presence felt in Las Vegas.

Known as a tireless recruiter, Paster was spotted at dozens of games last week, looking to find the next Derrick Rose or Chris Douglas-Roberts.

Now, July remains college basketball’s “dead period,” meaning none of the coaches are permitted to speak directly to or about potential recruits. So coaches like Pastner can only watch intently and take detailed notes.

Of course, that doesn’t stop coaches from chatting with former AAU stars.

Brandon Jennings, who famously dominated the Reebok Summer Championships in 2007, came through Las Vegas to root on friend and former teammate Renardo Sidney. Paster was also in the gym, which allowed the two a few minutes to catch up.

This time last year, it would’ve been a conversation about bringing a national title back to Tucson. Now, the conversation could’ve been about anything from good barbecue joints in Memphis to what Jennings could expect to see in Italy.

It was a peculiar scene, indeed.

nprevenas@gvnews.com | 547-9747