HIGHLANDS RANCH — Dave Matthews was laboring across the court inside a stuffy basketball gym in early July, weighed down by the massive tub of sweaty practice jerseys he was carrying out the door. “You don’t even want to know how bad these smell,” Matthews said, laughing.
Minutes earlier, Matthews, carrying his 8-month old son in his arms, was chatting with coaches, helping his wife update the registration fees, answering texts and e-mails and handing out roster sheets stacked with information on more than 100 high school players all spending the Fourth of July weekend chasing the same thing: a scholarship to play college basketball.
“That’s why I do all this,” said Matthews, who founded the Colorado Chaos club basketball program 17 years ago and served as host of the Colorado Invitational camp at ThunderRidge High School this month. “We’ve sent 404 kids to college. Our thing is, basketball is a tool to higher education. Sure, we have upper-middle class and even upper-class families whose kids are going to go to college without basketball. But then we have other kids where, if basketball doesn’t pay for their school, they aren’t going to school. So, when they get a scholarship, it’s very rewarding.”
As the number of college basketball programs has increased — there are 351 men’s Division I teams — so has the cutthroat competition to get scholarships. The summer’s Amateur Athletic Union basketball scene has become a giant audition for those prized pieces of paper, with college coaches having largely shifted their recruiting focus from attending high school games in the winter to watching club teams in the spring and summer.
In July alone there are three five-day evaluation NCAA periods. During these stretches, college programs send their staffs across the country to scout dozens of players.
“The college coaches have their own seasons going on in the winter, so it’s tough to get out as much,” Matthews said. “They might know that they need a point guard, and there are three they are looking at. The summer is where you can see them all.”
Traveling preferred
More Colorado club teams than ever are bringing players to these de facto summer job interviews. Roughly 30 programs based in Colorado have traveled out of the state this summer to showcase tournaments. Among their stops this month: Chicago, Dallas, Milwaukee, Atlanta, New York, Las Vegas, St. Louis, Indianapolis and Anaheim, Calif.
“You definitely get a lot of exposure you wouldn’t get if you were just back in Colorado in the gym or just going over to the high school and shooting,” said Dalven Brushier, a senior-to-be Doherty High School guard who helped the Colorado Springs-based Force club team win a championship last week at the Adidas Invitational in Indianapolis.
Brushier has received scholarship offers from Division II Adams State and the NAIA program at Concordia (Neb.), but his time on the travel circuit has helped him earn interest from Division I programs such as Weber State of the Big Sky Conference.
“You have to try to take advantage of that,” he said.
Last week, players from two of the state’s premier club teams, the Colorado Hawks and Billups Elite, represented Rocky Mountain basketball at a new level. Hawks forward De’Ron Davis, a Class of 2016 blue-chip recruit, and Billups guard Jaizec Lottie, one of the state’s top players in the Class of 2017, were invited to New York for the Adidas Uprising All-American Camp.
On the second day of the camp, Davis was chosen to play in a showcase game at Rucker Park in Harlem. Coaches from some of the country’s top college programs, many of whom are recruiting Davis, were on hand for the first evaluation period at the famed venue.
Despite suffering a dislocated finger early in the game, Davis said the trip to Rucker Park will stick with him.
“It was a great experience,” he said. “I loved it.”
Providing exposure for players isn’t just about putting them on a plane and flying to tournaments. Matthews, the Chaos director, keeps detailed notes on every one of the 100-plus players in his program, everything from grade-point averages and American College Testing scores to on-court strengths and weaknesses. He is constantly updating and sending the files to coaches at all levels, coupled with times and locations where those players will compete during recruiting periods.
“I market the (heck) out of our program. That’s what we’re really strong at,” Matthews said.
Premier development
Of course, providing exposure means little if the players being marketed aren’t up to par. As scoring in college basketball has dipped over the past few seasons, a narrative has developed that club teams don’t properly develop players for the next level.
Colorado Premier, founded four years ago by former NBA all-star Keith Van Horn, has taken a major step in a continued effort to make skill development a top priority for its players. This year Premier became the first Colorado club program to be accredited through USA Basketball. The move means all coaches in the program must become certified under the same set of national standards designed by the youth development staff of USA Basketball, which has produced more gold medal-winning teams in international competition than any other country, and is now using that credibility to address the state of the sport’s youth culture.
“Club basketball gets a bad rap as to why the state of college basketball is bad,” said Tyler Cline, Premier’s director of operations. “There has to be somebody to govern the club world. As a high school team you are governed by an organization like CHSAA (Colorado High School Activities Association), but at the club level there is nothing like that for anyone. It was important for us to get in with USA Basketball to really govern the way the game is taught. I would hope it would get to the point where if you wanted to coach a top-level travel team, you would need to have a certain certification level. I know they do that for soccer.”
Creating better basketball players before they are exposed to a travel circuit is the goal for Premier, which has 23 teams — boys and girls — from elementary school to high school levels.
“At our younger levels … we actually only do one team practice per week,” Cline said. “Then we have two one-hour, 15-minute skill-development sessions with higher-level coaches per week, because we just feel like kids are playing too many games. So we said, ‘How about we develop skills and then we can play?’ “
The talent level in Colorado appears to be rising. Five players in the 2016 class have already made pledges to Division I programs, with as many as a dozen more expected to get scholarship offers.
If those numbers continue to grow, the state’s grassroots programs will play a major role.
Nick Kosmider: 303-954-1516, nkosmider@denverpost.com or
