You love hoop. You want to hear everything about it from people who know what they're talking about. And that's why we want to invite you to Locked In. Whether you're a parent, player, coach, or just a diehard fan, it's your go to source for everything basketball. The latest recruiting news, expert training tips, deep dives into the most controversial topics in the sport. We cover it all, and we want you to be part of the family. So come hang. Locked In. Find it. Find us on all the major podcasting platforms. Welcome to Locked In, your source for everything basketball. My name is Nick DeFeo, alongside my co host Jason Shea. We dive into all things hoops, from recruiting tips to training advice, hot takes, and the latest news. Whether you're a player, coach, parent, or fan, we've got you covered. Don't forget to subscribe and follow us for more great content every week. Let's get locked in. Coach, how are ya? I'm doing great. Nick, how you doing? I'm doing well, man. Episode two. Choosing your AAU team. This one should be fun. It should be interesting. Yeah. Definitely helpful for parents. So we're going to dive we're going to dive right into it. AAU. What is it? Well, first you got to start with the disclaimer, right? That it's not a, you can't always use AAU unless you register with the organization. It's just become synonymous with travel basketball, usually in the spring, summer and now in the fall. It's very popular. I think it, in order to get into this discussion like a true coach, we want to focus on some negatives and go into what I listed as the 10 red flags in an AAU program, or choosing a, when you're choosing an AAU program. So what parents should look and see if they, or look, and if they see it probably should go in a different direction and don't go down that road. there's a lot of pitfalls in this. There's so many choices. How do you make the right choice as a parent? Yeah. It's really difficult. There's so many these days. There's so many teams to choose from. There's so many locations. Where do you practice? But the first one we'll dive into is, is limited practice time. You, you want to choose an AAU program where you're in the gym minimum twice a week. These AAU programs where it's maybe once a week or last minute cancellations, that's a huge red flag. Yeah, absolutely. So you start out with practices and. What is your coach doing at those practices is another question that you want to ask. You want to ask how often are you getting together to practice? Now, it's not fair to treat it like high school where you're going to practice every day because gyms cost money and most AAU programs don't have access to gyms. So you can't expect it to be every single night. If it is, then you're probably in a great program, but you can expect it to be at least twice a week. At least twice a week for 90 minutes where you're getting in the gym with your team and you're having to practice. If there's a skill session involved, that's even better. But if you're not practicing at all, or you're coming together on an outdoor court for 45 minutes of runs once in a while, once every couple of weeks, you're not really in a program that's going to develop you. Okay. So if you're going to play in a program that does not practice that often, and we'll get into this too, like the different levels of AU. So, unless you're playing at the highest level of AAU where it's transportation and distance that are the barriers to practices, you're not in a good situation. You need to be getting better and the only way to get better is to practice consistently with your team. Great. And I think the 90 minute slots is also key. Two 90 minute slots a week, that's three hours plus a tournament on the weekend. Now you're talking four, five, six, potentially seven to eight hours with your team per week during tournament season. And I think that that's huge for. Kids who are trying to develop and obviously we'll talk about the practice schedule and what practices look like But the development there whether it's high school middle school and all the way down to elementary school You want to get the kids encouraged to play, at least that seven eight hour mark during the week That would be huge. Absolutely. And so let's go to number two So again, number one, make sure you have a great practice schedule. You're in the gym consistently with your coach Okay Number two when you're talking to a coach or if you get to know a coach Or you're listening to the coach during a practice session or during a game. Does the coach consistently refer back to when he played? And this is how I did it. And back in the day, I was so good. I played AAU at the highest level. I scored 25 points a game. I, I, I, I, I, and it's like, okay, we get it. You played, a lot of us played, at different levels. You That's not the most important thing here. The most important thing is can you teach the things that you learned effectively to younger players. That's really the focus. So consistently using your own examples, maybe setting a bar. It's not too high for kids when really you need to be focused on how to get them where they want to be, what their goals are, what their peaks are, their potential is, not what yours was. And sometimes that can be a dangerous thing with a coach. I know we've both seen it in AAU where coaches are so focused on what they did in the past and they automatically think that makes them a great coach. No question. And there's levels to this, right? So, you have coaches that maybe potentially played college basketball, whether it's Division 1, Division 2, Division 3 level. 1 percent of high school kids go on to play division one basketball. That's more than it ever has been before. So there's more division one players right now than ever before. So if you're talking to division one coach from years ago, you're talking about a really good basketball player, but to your point, can they coach and can they teach? And that's where, that's where the biggest misconception is right now, where you get a coach who says, well, I've done this, I've done that. We can do this. We could do what I did. None of the players are going to be able to relate to that because they're not that coach or they haven't, they don't know who that coach is. So, having that, having said that, the parents really should sit in on a practice or two and really monitor and be concerned if somebody is saying, I did this, I did that, we're going to do this, we're going to do that because it's not going to translate to anything on the court for the kids. And like I said, most kids aren't going to relate to coaches like that because they don't know who the coach was. Absolutely right. And I think when you look at a coach who has experience, it has so many benefits. We both play college basketball at the division three level, very difficult level to play at relating to kids now as a coach, I don't think it's so helpful to talk about the things you did so well. It's more useful for me as a coach. And I don't know about you when kids are struggling and I'm able to relate to that struggling with them. To say, Oh, man, I ran those sprints once like I totally understand, not I used to run 17 touches in 45 seconds. That doesn't help. Something irrational. It doesn't help. Right. It's, it's more just relating to them and giving them, experienced opinion or, or some, advice on how you might've dealt with a tough situation like losing playing time in your career. I know what happened in my career and that's the type of experience you want to hear from a coach. Right. Who played at, at high levels, not I dropped 20 or yo, you gotta make that shot. Not helpful at all for a player. No, not gonna be helpful. And, and parents, just to, to recap number two if a coach is referencing when I played, definitely a red flag and, and I would ask some questions. Going out to number three, roster construction. Adding players, removing players, midseason, this is like. I mean, here we go. This is good. Now we get, now we get angry about things. This, this is as good as it gets. And this is, this has become a really sad situation in not only AAU basketball, but any basketball throughout the year. That's not inputting your roster with a, with a state association. And this can go from AAU. This can go to summer leagues. This can go to prep basketball. It's a mess and a huge red flag for parents, especially when that first tournament, your coach rolls out those 10 players, boys or girls, those 10 players. And then that next weekend, maybe you guys struggle, maybe you do okay. That next weekend you got two or three new players on the team. I've seen guys lose in a semi-final game and jump to the team that beat them for the next game in the finals. Come on. I've seen it. And that's it. It doesn't make. I don't think any sense that this is allowed. As I run tournaments. We try to catch people. We don't know every player. We're not watching every game, so it slips by you sometimes, but that level of well, disloyalty, commitment to team, of course, the player shouldn't jump. But what are the coaches doing? And so it's a red flag to look out for. If you're a parent, if you see players getting added, that don't come to practices that are playing for other programs and other teams. But it's not just a red flag. It's like, you guys got to run away. This coach is all about himself or herself. They're just in it to win. They don't care about development. They don't care about teaching values a team. I'm not trying to be corny when you just talk about values. It's just that you commit to a team for a season. If it's a spring or a fall, whatever it is, you get in there with your team and you practice and you go through disappointments and you go through successes together. I don't want a kid coming in that hasn't practiced with us after two weeks and just coming in for one game to try to win a weekend championship. So I get a t shirt. That's just, that's not what this should be about. And you're just no way your kid's getting better doing that. And there's no way that individual should be coaching teams if he's doing things like that. So yeah, adding kids and, and then just having, pickup teams. Of course you could do that. You could definitely just join up on pickup teams, your buddies and go into terms. Nothing wrong with that. But if a coach is charging you money or asking you to play and they are running their program this way, huge red flag. Get the heck outta there. Yeah. Get outta there quickly. Obviously if, if, if the coach is labeling it as the a a u, if there is a price tag, like you said, but, but back to your point and what I was gonna say is what are we teaching these kids? If, if you have, player A show up for every practice every every tournament so far, but then you bring in player B and he all of a sudden trumps that that player A and is now getting all the minutes taking all the shots. We're not teaching anybody anything, especially these kids. And now as they develop, they're going to understand like, oh, maybe I can just run from team to team or, I can be loyal as can be. I can go through the struggles, but someone's just going to play somebody over me anyway. That's that's just no good. No, it's absurd. And it's become so normal. At the, at the AU, travel basketball level. A lot of coaches are doing this coaches are recruiting off of other teams at the tournament. There's just, these are the things that give a basketball travel basketball bad name. When this kind of stuff happens it's up to the adults in the room to monitor it and regulate it and, and not allow it. But it's tough because like you said, people are not members of associations, which I totally understand. It costs money. Not it's hard enough to pull the money together for uniforms and gym time and insurance and everything else. So I get that, it's just don't, don't play for a team that's the roster is changing on a weekend and weekend baseball, a week out basis. And don't go play for a team that asks you to do that. Correct. I mean, that's just, that's just not a cool move, man. Like I don't even know how guys do that. I couldn't do that. I feel so uncomfortable. I don't think I could play well. Some guys are just immune to it. They're too used to it jumping around. It's because it's become such commonplace and it's so common now that, unfortunately, and we've both seen it, game one ends, you see a couple players sprinting to another court. Sometimes to play for another team within the same program or other times to play with, with unfortunately another team and they just rip the next jersey right out of the bag, sit on the bench and two minutes later, they're, they're ready to go for the next team. It's pretty, it's pretty sad. Yeah, let's jump, let's jump to what like this one is. I know for both of us is another big one and this is not, and I want to just like good disclaimer here when we're doing this, we're not here to bash AU coaches. We both coach AU. We've done it a long time. The majority of the guys do a great job and they do it for not a lot of money. They commit to their teams. They, they are selfless, spend time away from their family. So they're all, most of you guys are great, but we're just giving you the red flags and the ones to stay away from. And we'll talk about like the best ones and the things they're doing, but we're kind of doing that as we go through the list of what to stay away from. But number, this one, number four just irks the heck out of me. And that that's playing down. If you have an AAU coach, like if an AAU coach comes to me as a parent and says, and my son, it doesn't even matter if he's good or bad, actually. It doesn't even matter. But if he says to me, Hey, we'd love for your son to play for our 6th grade team or 5th grade team, and he's in 7th grade. I'm out. Goodbye. I'm out. And, and don't play dumb parents, like look on the apps of your tournaments, check out which group you're in. There's no such thing as being in the fifth grade division as a five, six, seven grade combo team. You're breaking the rules. Number one, it makes no sense. It's terrible for your kid. How are they getting better doing that? It's embarrassing. And then when people are there and they call you out like, Oh, Johnny, I, he was in a school. Two years ago, he was, he was in that grade. I remember him. This is, that's the best. It's the best. That's the best. When you hear a parent in the crowd, he's not in sixth grade. Yeah, and then, and then they're like, he's reclassing. He's a double reclass kid. So, fine, maybe you are a reclass kid, but like bring proof that you've already done it. Don't do it and say, I'm reclassing. Again, if a coach is trying to get you to do that, what does it tell you? The coach is all about himself or herself. They just want to win. That's all they care about. This is not about your development at all. It cannot be about your development as a player or your kids development as a player if they're playing them against kids that are one or two years younger. This isn't high school where, seniors can play against sophomores. It's not a big deal. Younger ages, grades, and ages matter more. There's a huge separation. So, if a coach is telling you to play down, get the heck out. Don't do it. Right. And unfortunately, the things that they're saying when they say, come play down, you can score X amount of points. You're going to start at this position or you're going to get the ball this many times. That is a, again, a major red flag. And from my experience personally, especially whether it's this year or last spring, I've seen kids play down. I know that they're at a different grade. But as a coach, can I challenge it? Sure. Can I make us think of it? Sure, but I'm going to sit there and teach my kids like guys, we are going to get this together. I don't care what grade they're in. I don't care what they're going to do. I don't care how good he is. We're going to play our way and we're going to try to impose our style and try to win that game regardless. Because again, I'm not going to sit here and make us think of it. But as a coach and a ton of other coaches know that the kids not in that great. And unfortunately, again, just like the one who said before, we're adding players are running across the court to play to another. Yeah. So it's not the same team within their same program, but again, the younger version of their, what's supposed to be their grade. Absolutely, and that does bring me to one other thing here, which may be a red flag to get out to, and that's the coach who always tells all of his parents, or her parents, that the kids on their team are older. Because that's not true. The majority of the time, again, the majority of the coaches in AAU are great guys, great women, they do a great job. They're not cheating. There are kids who are bigger than your kid. That's okay, too. Like, most of the kids are in the grade, so you don't see it a lot. And if you have a coach, we've had some coaches, and I'm never going to use names in this case, I'd love to, that just complain every time. Kids older, his kids older, and I love when we have the proof in there and, issue a technical file for the challenge, but they're not always older. Like Shaquille O'Neal had to look a lot bigger than everybody else when he played AAU, and I'm sure he got challenged a few times. Like, there are kids like that that are just bigger. So, get away in both situations. Both are just kind of, good red flags. Number five, disorganized. Disorganized. Nick, you're one of the more organized people I know. You could probably speak to this, but, talk about communication, the importance of that in an AAU program. Especially when it comes to traveling and going to tournaments and your scheduling. And, and just, overall, just the importance of organization in an AAU program. Yeah, absolutely. And it's something I've always kind of prided myself on is being organized. Absolutely. have clarity in your communication. And that's that's very simple. That's how I grew up with with my parents. And they always taught me that you need to communicate, you need to be organized. And that's something I'll take into my program. Whether I'm coaching high school, prep school or a you, it's something that needs to happen. But for me personally, I'll have my parents always meet with me at the beginning of the season. I'll lay out the whole ground rules, what the season is gonna look like to schedule everything. And then I asked them if Anytime you want to come into a practice, you're more than welcome to sit in. And this is, I'm having them test me purposefully, but most coaches will say, we're going to practice at this time, this time, no, one's allowed in practice. And I think this is a major red flag where if you're a good coach, why wouldn't you want the parents to watch you develop their kid? That's going to help you. By word of mouth, they're going to spread the word to other families. So, hey, coach, so and so is great. You guys should, you guys should come over and jump ship and play for his program next season, but a lot of coaches, again, this is a huge red flag. We'll, we'll not let anybody in practices. And when parents do sit on practice, they will clearly see what are we running for offense? What are you running for defense? What do we do for press breakers? What do we do? Press defense. How do we break, how do we break the press and so on and so forth? And. What skill development are we doing in practice? And that, again, that goes a long way where a parent can actually sit there. They can understand the language so that when they go to the tournament and play, they understand, okay, oh, I know five hours or five is going to be a five out offense, or X is going to be a trap on defense. So they can kind of understand the verbiage along with their kid of what the system is like. And again, coming back to this, most parents don't know what happens during the week in practice. So when they get to the games on the weekend. It's chaotic. They don't know what the plays are. They don't know why their kid's not playing. They don't know really anything about the offense or the defense. And that causes issues, and now we're, the game, the game finishes and now our parents are trying to talk to the coach and say, hey, what, what's going on? Why didn't my kid play? Or why didn't why didn't he get any shots or score or anything like that? And I'm sure you've seen it as well, but for a good coach, whether it's, again, AAU, high school, summer league. Be organized, have your communication plan, make sure you talk to to your families. And I know you can speak on that well as as well. Yeah, and I agree with you and a you. I think opening the gym up to parents is a good idea. I do think there's a difference at the high school level. At the high school level, we closed practices. It's just it's a different level of intensity. It's every single day. It really is totally the coaches prerogative because it's not pay to play. It does change a little bit. And I think the parents at a young age are more helpful. Then, by like, like you said, going to practice able to reinforce what you're saying to them at the high school level. It's a little different. We probably don't want the parents reinforcing as much. We kind of want them as as much out of it as possible. But let's just kind of piggyback there. And this is just one. This is more of a coaching one. And this is maybe a little bit more difficult and maybe a little more nitpicking. Because I understand the time restraints and why coaches do it. But if you play for a coach. Who's primary defense is a zone defense in AAU basketball. And some will do a trapping zone defense because they just want to generate, quick scores because they don't have time to put in that, those, really work on man to man principles, or they don't know how to. Man to man is tough to teach. Standing in a 2 3 zone and trapping out of it is really easy to teach. Not hard. 1 3 1's not hard, although most of the guys do. Be honest with you. They don't teach it properly. They're just banking on the top trap, turning it, turning the ball over and getting layup. But if you're, if you have any kind of competency, exactly that attack and it's layups or open threes. If you do it properly against, poorly coached one, three, one defenses, but you're not helping the kids. If you teach man to man, and just, from my perspective as a coach, we teach all man at, at Notre Dame. And, and I think I've told you this in the past, we've gone to zone defenses in the state tournament. And never practiced it once. And people say, well, you're so unprepared if you do that. No, we're not. Because zone is so simple. If you're great at man, guard the guy in your area, communicate switches, right? No, and be aware of shooters and scores and your scouting report. And it becomes a lot easier for guys because, they don't have to fight through screens as much, you stay out of foul trouble, but it's so simple if you have great man to man principles. Well, if you're going to the high school level and you're playing AAU and all you do is play zone, which I've had so many guys come to me after playing years of zone, teaching them man in ninth grade with three weeks of practice before the first game is really hard to do. It takes like a year, maybe two years before they're proficient at man to man. The kids who come to me from man to man AAU programs, it is so easy. Yeah, there's a few things because we have more practice time. We have that advantage of the high school level. There's some things that could be improved on and we improve on. How to guard screens properly, all different types of guarding screens. Are you switching big to big, guard to guard? What are you doing? But if you come to me after playing zone your whole career, you're not ready. Yeah. And you're definitely not ready to play at the college level. So yeah, you might win some more games. It's the easy way out to play zone if you're an AAU coach, but it's not the right thing for the players. So again, if you're nitpicking as a parent, You think you got a good player for you and most parents do think their kids are pretty good. Maybe go watch a team play from that program on a weekend and see what kind of what they do. Ask your high school coach, ask somebody who you think knows basketball and see what kind of defense they play. I think it tells a lot. Yeah, I totally agree with you and it's a quick fix, right? Like you said, they want quick scores. They want to get out in transition. They want to run. They want to, they want to get up, 10 plus, 15 plus points on teams. Yeah. I have a, I have a opinion on this whole thing and it's related to what you just said. Coaches don't know how to teach man to man defense. And it's a huge issue. I don't care if you deny the ball. I don't care if you play pack line. I don't care what type of man defense it is. Coaches do not know how to guard, or how to teach, or how to guard. Man to man. Yeah, most of them just say switch, switch everything. That's it. If a team goes to man, we're going to switch everything, any sort of screen, or we're going to trap the ball screen. We're going to try to make it quick. We're going to try to take advantage of maybe a team that's not as good, turn them over, go score, and then we're going to sit back in that zone again. It's harder for a coach, a good coach, to teach his own offense as well. Because kids just resort to shooting threes or, maybe trying to get the ball in the paint, but they have less options to get the ball in the paint. And it's harder for especially younger kids to score outside three point line consistently. Plus, it's a time thing. Absolutely. We're talking about, if you're in a good program, we're talking about two, but you're also talking about two 90 minute practices. What do most coaches do? It's easier to put in man plays. You have to establish your man offense. That's what you do first on offense. And you, then you kind of check the box on zone. Yeah. But you don't spend a lot of time on it because you don't have time. And so in fairness, that's why zone is pretty effective, especially early weeks in the spring. You can see teams play zone. It's really effective. Yeah, no question. And it, when I was starting out as a coach, I did the five star basketball camps. And we had the old school, you have 20 to 25 minutes sessions, four or five in a row. So you're really just like coaching for an hour and a half to two straight hours, intense, good players. And I would always choose shell defense always. And I don't care who it was with. Whether it was a high school coach or a prep school coach, I always wanted to do shell defense because I wanted to know how to teach man to man defense from the gecko. And that was when I was 19, 20 years old, still playing and then just removed from college basketball. But I wanted to learn how to guard the basketball, how to guard one pass away, how to guard two passes away. The majority of it was all denied because that's what was popular back then. The pack line wasn't really huge into the last couple of years. But I wanted to learn how to beat a man to man defense, but how to teach a man to man defense. Because, again, if you think, if you're a parent and you think you have a good player, and they're going to play for their local high school or their local prep school or whatever level as they get better, it's going to be man to man defense. If you have a college basketball player, they're going to be playing man to man defense. I don't care. There's only one school in the whole world that plays zone the majority of the time and everybody knows it's Syracuse. And not anymore. And not anymore since the coaching came. Since Coach Bayheim left. But they always knew it was Syracuse. But now, if you're playing college basketball, I don't care if it's Division I, Division III, JUCO level, it's going to be man to man defense. And if your kid does not know how to play man to man defense or how to guard certain actions, they're not going to be on the floor for at least, like you said, one to two seasons. One to two seasons. We're talking junior year. Absolutely. And so do your kids a favor. It's harder, you want to look for a coach that that's running man to man. All right, here's a fun one. And I just wrote in my notes, Bob Knight and Bob Knight's one of the greatest coaches of all time. If you know anything about Bob Knight, he's pretty excitable throwing chairs across the floor and everything else. Really be careful of getting with a coach who is over the top. In terms of emotion, you want great emotion, but I'm talking about like they're going after the officials in a major way, right? That they're just going nuts as a you officials that, depending on what tournament you're, you're, you're playing at their high school officials. Most of them are, a lot of them are freshmen and JV officials. They are still learning. They're using this to learn, to try to be high school fish. That's what a lot of them are doing. Not all. I know we all go to the tournaments and there's like, I've seen guys walk in with a case of beer. And hit it in the cooler, and we had to kick them out. I saw that. And they just want to hang out all day. So there's those guys too. And you hopefully those get weeded out. For the most part, they're trying their best and they're just learning the game. And I don't think any of us would want to do that job getting yelled at by a lot of people who don't know what that really the rules are at the end of the, what's going on. And so don't choose a coach who's going crazy all the time. And what that generally does is incites the players. It's them out of really again, learning basketball, getting better at basketball. They get into excuse making. It's the referee's fault. That's why we're losing. That's why this is happening. Then parents buy in because parents, are spending their weekends there and it's fun to have a conversation about it. And then now they're getting on the officials. And so now we're teaching bad sportsmanship across the board. I've seen guys and this is okay. Red flag, the run. Here's one. If you play for a coach or know a coach who's coached games and even one time had the cops called as a result, leave the program immediately, right away. First time. And again, no tolerance. I've seen this. I've seen it all. I hate to say I'm not that old. I don't want to be like the old guys. I've seen it all, but I have seen this. You got to get out. Right. And then the last thing is on the Bob Knight front, be careful. Like the old school mentality of it's good for him. Yellen Adams is good for him. Yes. Holding kids accountable is good. Be on time to practice. Touch the line on a sprint. Sprint back. Or you're not going to play as much. There's always that consequence. That's the coach's best friend. It's his most lethal weapon to encourage players to play the way he or she wants them to play. But you don't need someone who's like blitzing kids on the weekend. Making them cry and, just going crazy in their face, like, maybe a Bob Knight would he coach at Indiana. They were like number one in the country for years for years. It's totally different kids. You're coaching. That is, it is false to think that that's going to make these kids maybe one kid responds well and he gets tougher. And as a result, he's a better player. The majority of the kids are not going to do well with that. And they're not going to learn anything from that. And by the way, as the coach, who's doing that, you're, you're probably not qualified to be doing it. Almost definitely not. And, and, again, what are we teaching the kids? We play fall basketball. We play spring basketball to learn and develop and as coaches, but also as players and ultimately, again, if you have a middle school kid, elementary school kid, even, freshmen in high school. It's about development and it's about getting better. But if your kids getting yelled at too often and screamed at for maybe even making a good play, they're going to get turned off quickly. And unfortunately I've had a couple of kids that I've talked to recently that I've had this experience where it was 5th, 6th, 7th grade and they were playing for a coach. It was a, it was a travel coach and they got turned off and now they don't play basketball because they, I just got yelled at all the time. And again, major red flag, you want to teach the kids, you want to encourage the kids to get better. Don't play for Bob Knight or what he thinks is Bob Knight. No, and I'm a big believer in what coaches will say. A lot of times they justify this and things like saying things like iron sharpens iron. I love that phrase. I do love it. That's not iron sharpening iron. Okay, you could be effective as a coach and teach toughness, mental toughness, physical toughness, without being that way. You can certainly do that. And if you're spending all your time in AAU yelling at officials, you're spending not enough time coaching your kids. So. Totally. Totally. Again, I feel like we're on the complaint train about coaches. Again, these are just red flags for parents. Majority of coaches are great. Here's another one. Along these lines. Play for me and I'm going to get you exposure. Fifth grader. Sixth grader, seventh grader, eighth grader, you're going to get exposure with my program. We're going to travel all over the country to get you exposure. Where are you going? What exposure are you getting these kids, right? That's a red flag. You're going to spend a lot of money traveling as a parent. I have a funny one about this and, and I've seen exposure. I've been to EYBL events in Atlanta, Dallas, LA. There might have been a couple more. I've seen it. I've seen the Adidas circuit. I've seen the EYBL. It's top notch. It's legitimate exposure. I've been training a middle school athlete for almost two years now. And he plays for a solid AU program. No, no issues with it. They, they run, pretty good stuff and have a good program. Eighth grade season this past spring. He says he's playing for this team. I said, great. What, what tournaments you guys play? And he said, Oh, we're, we're going to Atlanta and we're going to Chicago and we're going to, and I said, what, what grade are you in? He said, eight, eighth grade going to be ninth grade next year. I said, well, you know what, why are you going to play those tournaments? And his father was there as well. And then he goes, well, we're playing in these big exposure events. And I said, Oh, really? Who's coming to watch you? He said, I'm not sure, coach says there's going to be a bunch of, a bunch of schools down there and coaches down there. And I, I talked to the dad and he said the same thing. Fast forward two weeks later, he comes back in for his training session. And, and I just wanted to pick his brains. I knew what the answers were going to be. I said, right to the dad, how was the tournament, how to go, it was great. It was a good experience. All this, all that we played these great teams. I said, Oh, well, you know what, was there a lot of exposure, a lot of coaches there. And he kind of looked at me and kind of smiled. And I said, I told you, and he said, I know you did. I, I said, there were no coaches were there. He said, There was not one coach, whether it was high school or college that weren't coaching AAU in that tournament to be seen at the whole gym. He said, we played great teams, we saw some really good other players, but no coaches and not one college coach. Meanwhile, they had to foot the bill for the flight for two parents and at least one kid. They had to foot the bill for the hotel. Two parents, one kids, probably one room, but you're talking three, four nights. In Atlanta, at least. Yeah. And, again, just goes to show at that middle school level. It's not about the exposure. Let me help. Let me help out all the parents with this. There is no exposure at all. College coaches do not give a hoot about how good your kid is in fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh or eighth grade. They don't care. They're definitely not going to go watch and they're not even a watch was in ninth grade, even on the E Y B L you could go play great. They're very few players, even on that circuit are going to get offers as a result of what they do on the E Y B L in ninth grade. They're not going to watch you. They're not reading the rating publications. They're fun. You can still have fun with those. We'll have some fun with those. Okay. We'll definitely have fun with that. You can have fun with it, but it doesn't mean anything. Okay. You're not getting recruited. They don't care. We talked about our last episode. Coaches aren't even recruiting guys out of high school, right? Junior seniors, right? And so then you think about, well, okay, well, we're going out of state. Great. You're going out of state or you're going like out of region. You're taking these long trips. You're playing against the same teams that exist in your area are there, right? The same teams. You say, well, the competition's so much better. And that could be true sometimes because, especially we live in Connecticut. It's a small state with three and a half million people. Well, yeah, if you go play in a tournament in Florida that has 30 million people, there might be a few more good basketball players when you have 27 more million people. That's fair, but you don't need to do it. You could find good teams to play in your area. You don't have to chase exposure. And a coach who's telling you they're, they're taking you to gain exposure at that age. They just, they actually just don't get it. And again, they think that they're going to get, and this brings up the next one. A sponsorship opportunity for their programs and that's number nine when your coach tells you they're sponsored. What does that mean? Exactly. We've had a local program here has been sponsored by Under Armour for years. Sponsored how? Sponsored how? Is all your stuff free? So here's, here's the best part. If you are sponsored, it's truly sponsored by a sneaker team and then they open a team store that you have to buy something from. At a discount, you're not sponsored, not sponsored. You all, everything's free. If you're sponsored, you're not. So that's number one. And you're getting, they're trying to hype programs and you got onto this circuit, which you're paying to get on. And there's nothing wrong with that. Again, good competition, go experience it. If you want to do it fine. There's, there's nothing wrong with it, but you're not sponsored and that's okay too. It's just, it's alarming when, when programs. Falsify that, right? There's very few sponsored programs. There's, there's three major circuits at this point, major sneaker circuits where you're truly sponsored to be on. And those programs that are on those circuits, very fortunate to be there. There's a lot of luck in who you know to get on them. Those programs, those players are getting a lot of free gear. They're traveling for free. They're obviously playing these terms for free. Their hotels are covered. Their food is covered. It's just very different. That's truly sponsored. If you don't have that, you're not sponsored. And I could be wrong on this, but I don't think there's any sponsored fourth, fifth, sixth, or seventh grade teams. There might be a new eighth grade circuit with EYBL. Maybe I, but I bet you, they do not get everything for free. Well, that's the thing about the circuits in, in the sneaker circuits, especially is that each team's budgeted, each team gets certain an allotment of money. That they need to distribute amongst not only their seventeens team, but their seventies and sixteens, because the sixteens teams, sixteens will travel to, I think it's now one or two EYBL tournaments prior to Peach Jam. That's for the EYBL and I'm sure Adidas and Under Arbor do the same thing, but they have to budget that money and the heads of these sneaker teams have to have to depict what they're going to spend that money on. They're most of them, if not. All of them are not taking their ninth grade team and maybe even not their eighth grade team unless it's local. And I know a few sneaker teams up here in New England that go by bus because it's cheaper because they have to save that money to distribute it elsewhere. Again, so if the coach is telling you that we're sponsored or you're gonna get this amount and you're getting charged for it or Ultimately, you show up and the logo is not on your jersey that whether it's Nike, Adidas or whatever sneaker that he says it is, you're not sponsored. And in middle school, you don't need to be sponsored quite, quite honest. And again, if they say you're sponsored and then, hey, write me a check for 1, 000 to play. Why? You're not, you're not sponsored. And that there's nothing wrong with that. It's just again, it's kind of false advertising to try to gain players and build up your program. So, just be careful of that. And then the last one, and this is one that's, interesting for me because as a dad and a coach, I've dealt with this for the last six or seven years. And that's daddy ball. We had an issue in our newsletter. One of our first issues was about that was about daddy ball and the pitfalls of that potentially, right? Where if you're being asked to play for an AU program and the dad of a player on the team is coaching that team, it doesn't mean you should walk away. It doesn't mean you should run away for sure. There are so many great coaches who are also dads, I wouldn't consider myself great. I'm just, I was able to manage it pretty good and with him pretty good with him. Yeah. I was able to manage it, but even me, it took time. We could go into a whole nother podcast on how to coach your son. I have a lot of tips on that and the biggest one being around the ride home, like shut your mouth on the wire at home, put some music on, ask about fantasy football, do anything else but talk about the game. You're going to ruin your relationship if you do that. Just don't do it. There are sometimes some situations where I don't think it's too hard to read. You have to give it a little bit of time to see, number one, is the coach qualified? Even though he's a dad, he's a qualified, does he coach somewhere else? Has how much experience does he have? Is he just in it because his son's in it? Has he been in it before? Do you think he'll be in an after, right? That's a big factor. Watch how he is in the games. It's also a little bit dangerous too. You don't want to blame everything on or, or, Associate every decision he makes with the fact that he's one player on the, on the team's father, but is everything running through this kid, is the dad building this super team around his kid where he's trying to really highlight him. And we have a joke when parents call about playing time, parents generally want the four best players on the court and their son, right? Is that what's going on? So those are good questions to look at. I think that's really a case by case basis. It's not necessarily negative. These guys are really passionate. Sometimes it's a big positive. Cause you get someone who's more committed and wants to be in even more and wants the team to get better even more and loves the relationships that his son is building with these players and really facilitates those relationships as a result of being the coach. So I don't think it's all negative. It's just something to be aware of. There are bad situations there too, potentially. Yeah, totally. And this one, this one might be more long term here. You might have to spend a season going through with this coach to kind of see and feel him out in, in really, is he giving his son the basketball. 99 percent of the possessions, or is she giving her daughter the basketball regardless of position or starting when everybody in the whole gym knows they're not good enough, and that's big, the biggest one usually and I've gotten this in the last couple of weeks from a lot of parents and say, hey, my kid doesn't want to play for this coach because it's all about his kid. And again might be one tournament. It might be a couple weeks of practice, but this one's going to be more long term and ask the questions. Ask the questions, and, and kind of look for those red flags that we talked about throughout this episode and, and really see, is it really all about his kid? And obviously the biggest one that we've noticed is, is Lonzo ball and their father and what he's done to their kids. And, it's worked out for a couple of them. Great. But I know they put them under a lot of pressure and, and unfortunately that's what parent slash coaches do with their kid is put them, put their, their son or daughter under a lot of pressure. And, and it's really sad, it's really sad. And we're, we're creating this expectation that's Surmounting and unfortunately there they can't handle that, as whatever, as a fourth or fifth or sixth or seventh grade student athlete, it's really unfortunate. So absolutely I think, I think spot on there. And I think that at the end of the day, to kind of sum it up, I think, so we talked about a lot of the pitfalls and red flags to watch out for. So what are you looking for? I think you're looking, again, for a well organized program or coach. You're looking for multiple practices a week. You're looking for a coach who is very professional in how they speak to your kids and how they handle referees and how they handle different situations that clearly communicates with you via email or text with you and your son or daughter through the AAU program. You're looking for someone who's cool and calm, collected, right, not, can be a dad, doesn't have to be your, or, or. I shouldn't say, you don't have to run away from if it is right. You're just looking for a good, solid situation of development is the number one priority, not false claims, not, promises of grandeur. If your son is, or daughter is going to be a high level player, you'll get there. And we'll talk about that in another episode of where the exposure really is and when it's important to get it right. Yeah, for sure. Playing for a coach that, that, that truly is about having fun at the end of the day. Especially if it's AAU spring, spring or fall, it doesn't matter. But does that coach want the best for, for that group of kids? Is he gonna set something up at the end of the year where everybody can sit down, have a meal together, have dessert together, and kind of just hang with the parents and hang with the kids just for the pure enjoyment of being together? And I think that's a huge thing that, that most of these programs won't do these days. They're just gonna say, hey, this is our last tournament, hands in. You and see you guys next spring. Hopefully you come back or, or come train with me or, or yada, yada. So, again, go through this episode, we have we will have a newsletter out later this week in regards to these red flags and what works and what doesn't work. And ultimately. Go, go where your kid loves to have fun and finds a good group of kids and ultimately a good coach to play for. Yeah, you want someone to make sure your son or daughter enjoys the game. Have fun, get better. When it's time to get serious about things, you'll know it. And if you have good people around you, they'll tell you when it's time. This is Locked In, your source for everything basketball. Once again, my name is Nick DeFeo, alongside Jason Shea. We dive into all things hoops, recruiting tips, training advice, and hot takes. Whether you're a player, coach, parent, or fan, we've got you covered. Don't forget to subscribe YouTube, Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok. Follow us for more great content and ultimately subscribe to that newsletter. We appreciate you guys listening. Thanks again.