THE 2012 SEASON
We do not hold tryouts. Instead, the coaches watch every prospective player during the winter high school season and invitations are given to the players selected for the Academic Basketball Club. Practices are held twice a week commencing once the CIAC season is over for each player; the first overall practice for non-CIAC players is the first Saturday in March. Practices for each team are held separately one evening a week and together one evening a week, through the end of May when students are studying for final exams.
Our uniforms are the best quality we can find, matching our players and are custom made and unique to make it as easy as possible for college coaches to identify each player both in person and on video. We do everything we can to promote our players – we would put their respective GPA’s, SAT’s and Band-1 AI (for the Ivy League schools) on the backs of their shooting shirts if we thought it would be perceived positively and get them more attention from college coaches. In every way, we know they are being recruited and in many ways we are selling, so players are cleanly groomed and act like the respectable young gentlemen they are at all times – every impression counts and many, many excellent impressions are what we seek.
Our Tournament schedule for the 17u Teams, updated for the latest changes in the NCAA-regulated calendar are:
| April 7 | A Saturday-only event with Sunday off for Easter |
| April 14-15 | Hoop Mountain New England Recruiting exposure event |
| April 21-22 | Basketbull exposure event at Wesleyan in the LIVE period |
| April 28-29 | CT States A for the Rubin Team, Providence Jam Fest for the Krumins Team |
| May 5-6 | Hoop Mountain - the primary exposure event in front of academic school coaches |
| May 12-13 | States "B" in Hartford for the Rubin Team; tbd for the Krumins Team |
| May 19-20 | Basketbull exposure event at Amherst for both teams |
| May 26-27 | Gym Rat Challenge in Albany - the premier exposure event in the Northeast for both teams |
| June 2-3 | Hoop Mountain exposure event @ Island Garden LI as a combined single squad as some players will be studying for finals and others are at the Yale camp |
On June 4th, we send everyone to prepare and study for school finals and to take a few weeks off from practices. Our players will be at several camps of the top academic schools (the Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Brown, Penn, Princeton, Dartmouth, Williams and Bowdoin camps are during these three weeks and our players will be there as they select the right camps for them) and then convene in the middle of July at the Hoop Mountain Academic All-America Camp at Brandeis before heading to Las Vegas for West Coast Nationals and then on to Orlando for AAU Nationals the last week of July.
The Camps ALL of our players will be at: (applications will be linked here when available).
Hoop Mountain Academic Camp @ Brandeis (mandatory for all ABC players who qualify).
Players will be at some of these camps: Yale, Princeton, Penn, Columbia, Harvard, Brown, Dartmouth, Bowdoin, Williams, Cornell, Hoop Group Academic Camp, and Hoop Mountain Super Week.
Full Game video will be available upon request; Personal Highlight Videos of most players will be available through www.Crusader22.com. You can become a "subscriber" to these videos through YouTube and receive automatic notification when videos are added or updated.
Our summer, with the camps and our trip to Las Vegas and Orlando, resolutely keeps with both Rule #1 and Rule #2.
