Nike Midwest Showdown

[selectcoach]

I just want to know did anyone else have this same experience at Nike Midwest. First of all my 14U team i think did a very good job this past weekend. Our pool include All Ohio Red, Dayton Lady Hoopsters, Louisville Lady Legends, and New York Elite. I think the pool was real competitive as well as the tournament.

The competition may have been the only positive thing about the tourney. First of all we lost 3 games, 2 by only 3 points and one by 6 points, in all 3 losses the coaches held the ball at the end. That is not the problem though because giving the circumstances i would have held if we had a lead too, but the point the rules stated "NCAA Rules", which also stated we will be playing with a "30 second shot clock", that was pretty messed up for the money and time you invest in these tournaments, only 2 venues had shot clocks the other 2 didnt so depending on where you played you may or may had to use NCAA rules.

The last thing i was displeased with was the scheduling and waiting until midnight to find out whether or not you played on Monday, because we tied for 3rd in our pool, and not knowing whether or not the tourney was using the point system that was displayed on the pool schedules on the walls of every gym we played in.

Our team was a non affiliated 14U team from Memphis who was doing there best to make it to Monday and after past evaluations of this tournament we expected a lil more organization, especially after attending a Mike White event in April, but anyway did anyonelse have a similar experience?

[HoosierDaddy]

I agree completely. We experienced the same problems. In my opinion you either use shotclocks for the entire tournament or don't use them for the entire tournament (and market the tournament as such)

We were very displeased to find the school gyms didn't have shot clocks at all. And the one game we played at UC - on the court we used they were broken. However at Sports Plus the shotclocks were present and working fine. In one of our no shot clock games the officials changed the rules with about 12 minutes to go in the second half. Up to that point they had been officiating NCAA rules except no shotclock. At that point they decided to go HS rules accross the board (although there was a lengthy discussion about it) All of this was due to a coach complaining about the lack of a 5 second closely guarded call (he wanted the call since the shot clock was not there - and I can see his point - however as rare as that call is, I'm not sure I would've made that big of a deal about it and forced the directors hand into straight HS rules)

How hard is to find or borrow some portable shot clocks to make sure all the games are played according to the published rules? I could understand if the clocks broke during the game or something like that, but they had plenty of time to make sure they had adequate equipment.

At the very least they should've been able to foresee the problems with not having the clocks and made the rules very clear on the courts without them. In the game at UC without them they did communicate the rules clearly and up front - but no such luck in Mason.

We also were waiting until midnight to find out about Monday's bracket. But for us it wasn't too bad because our game didn't get over until 11:45. The worst part of that was we had to turn around and play at 8 am. The other team was in pretty much the same boat so I'm not saying anything was unfair - but it sucks to not get back to the hotel until well after midnight and have to be ready to go for an 8 am tipoff the next day.

Games starting late were a common nuisance, they were a full game behind or more on several of the courts I saw

I'll give these guys and gals a pass this year, because last year we attended the same event (although they used a different main venue) and it was pretty well run and organized. I don't remember any of these problems from 2007. However they really need to be able to pinpoint the problems and fix them for any future events.