Really big deal : Top talent, local teams pepper Real Deal on the Hill field
Posted on Friday, April 18, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/nwat/Sports/64257/
The fourth installment of the Real Deal on the Hill may be the best as a record amount of teams and blue-chip high school basketball players descend on Fayetteville today.
The three-day AAU tournament expanded considerably since last year and will include 257 teams in 10 age classifications. Games will start today on 42 courts at 16 locations, extending from Bentonville to the central hub at Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville.
ESPN. com’s No. 1 player in the 2009 high school class, Derrick Favors, will be here. Dozens of other players considered to be in the Top 100 by multiple recruiting services will also take part.
“ I think this about all that we can take, ” said Bill Ingram, the tournament’s director. “ We still have over 200 teams on the waiting list. ”
The tournament went from a 74-team field in 2005 to the 200-plus number through a gradual increase from year to year. This year’s 17-and-under field, complete with 64 teams, may be the deepest in Real Deal on the Hill history.
“ It’ll be the best event in the spring because the matchups are really, really good, ” said Justin Young, a national recruiting expert for Rivals. com. “ They really get the matchups right. They’ve got the ones you’d turn your TV on to watch. They really pack that gym out. ”
Young traveled last week to one of the better AAU tournaments of the spring, the Boo Williams tournament in Hampton, Va., and said the Real Deal on the Hill has traditionally been one of the most organized and structured of the spring tournaments. Real Deal will also feature the most talented field of all the national spring AAU tourneys.
Favors, who the University of Arkansas is recruiting, will play for the Atlanta Celtics squad this weekend. The 6-foot-9 power forward and will be joined by the likes of Shawn Williams, Lance Stephenson, Kenny Boynton, Clarence Trent and Fayetteville’s own Fred Gulley.
Most of the names may sound unfamiliar now, but some of the high school seniors-to-be may become household names in the future. The same tale came to fruition for Real Deal alums like Greg Oden, Mike Conley Sr., Michael Beasley, Jrue Holliday, Wayne Ellington and Kevin Durant.
“ The list could go on and on, ” Ingram said. “ Our list is unbelievable.
“ We’ve had so many great players come through here that are playing huge roles in college. We all know Beasley will be the No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft this year, and our tournament this year has another loaded group. ”
Stephenson plays for the New York Juice, and is described as a shooting guard with a “ New York attitude. ”
“ And Favors is a kid that, if the high school rule wasn’t around, he’d be a No. 5 pick, ” Ingram said. “ So would Lance Stephenson. ”
Ingram will coach the Arkansas Hawks, who will provide a few local players and one out-of-state star. Coleson Rakestraw, a 3-point specialist out of Siloam Springs, will provide an offensive spark along with Gulley, a target of UA coach John Pelphrey.
Trent, a power forward out of Findley Prep (Henderson, Nev. ), is also a target of Pelphrey and will be seen in the Hawks’ starting lineup.
In the 16-and-under classification, the Fayetteville Fire will represent Northwest Arkansas well with a bevy of Fayetteville High sophomores. The team won the Division II qualifier in Little Rock last week, and never trailed onward to a 9-0 record.
As for the 2009 recruiting class, while extremely heavy in talent, it is perhaps one of the toughest for college coaches to dissect in several years, said Young of Rivals. com.
The Real Deal will give college coaches their first opportunity to evaluate and dissect the top prospects. The tournament, for that very fact, was purposefully scheduled on the first weekend during the NCAA’s sanctioned spring evaluation period.
Simply put, dozens of top-tier coaches like North Carolina’s Roy Williams, Kansas’ Bill Self and Memphis’ John Calipari will be roaming the corridors of Bud Walton Arena and high school gyms this weekend looking for a future standout before he’s eyeballed by another rival coach.
Come Saturday, it’s a treasure hunt on Christmas morning for most of the coaches.
The Real Deal has notoriously been the event where 10 to 15 players separate themselves from the pack for the first time in the three-day championship, Ingram said.
For that very fact, a virtual unknown may pop up out of nowhere to be one of the top players in the tournament. In the first year of Real Deal, Memphis Pump N Run guard Willie Kemp bolted up the recruiting rankings after an MVP and tour nament championship in 2005. As a result, more top schools entered the picture before Calipari’s Memphis squad landed the prep star that beat teams loaded with top talent such as Oden, who now is in the NBA with the Portland Trail Blazers.
The past has shown that evaluating talent isn’t an exact science some times.
“ It’s been tough for the coaches this year and last, ” Young said. “ I think it’s a nationwide thing. They just don’t know who their top guys are. They may have a list of some guys but evaluating hasn’t really been done. The next couple of weeks are going to be pretty important as to whom these teams go after, and this tournament is really the springboard. ”