With the all travel ball teams/programs out here in Northern California...What do you as parents/players look for when deciding on a team or program? Is it winning, development, cost, coaching, teammates, location, scheduling, or programs reputation/history? I am sure in some way its a little of all these things but whats your/your child's top priority when choosing a team to play for?

I think the top thing I was looking for is development. There are a ton of programs that claim to be a development program but the coaches/ practices fall short. It seems like practices are non exsistant. They seem more like game day coaches and even on game day they don't develop the players as I think they should with the price and promises they give.

Thoughts?......

Norcal Jumpsquad begins its Youth Basketball Fall League for 14u,13u,12u and 10u this Saturday at Overfelt High in San Jose. We are looking for 1 more 13u and 1 more 12u team. League runs 5 weeks, 2 games a day and will be FINISHED before the 1st CYO game. For more info please contact Marcus Washington at coachmarcus@norcaljumpsquad.com or Denee Adamson at Denee.adamson@ariat.com

San Ramon Valley 2015 PG Keith Smith will play at Monteverde in Florida next year.

St. Francis-Mountain View 2016 small forward Noah Stapes has committed to Point Loma Nazarene.

He played with Top Flight and Lakeshow this spring/summer.

I'm hearing that after many years of success at Drake, Coach Doug Donnellan is no longer the coach at Drake. He's is one of the better coaches and people in the high school coaching ranks and will be missed. Don't have the exact details, but I'm sure that parents who feel their kids were slighted had much to do with the departure. Good luck in your future endeavors and congrats for all you did and all you accomplished.

Whitney beat Rocklin 28-20.

http://www.sacbee.com/sports/high-school/article35019726.html

Freedom shocked Amador valley twice tonight with a 63 yard bomb on the first play of the game from Sweeney to Gio Fauolo and then with only nine seconds left Sweeney unloaded another bomb for 62 yards on a catch and pitchout to the Don receiver who pitched out the ball to Dominic Dominguez and he was off to the races and the score was 31-28.. with 23 seconds left in the game, Amador Valley's McCullough barreled over from the two yard line to over take Freedom on what looked like the winning TD and just pulled ahead of Freedom 28-24....But the 62 yard pass play mentioned above followed AV's score which was the final blow to a wild four quarter of drama...
In between the first and the fourth quarter, both teams were busy pushing each other back and forth with Rivers doing the majority of the ground work for Freedom and McCollough and Jones for Amador Valley....In the first quarter, Freedom did not have one first down, but the 63 yard pass over shadowed that.

Freedom Freshmen got by Amador Valley 26-7
JV Amador Valley.....06.....00.....07.....00-----13
Freedom.....................00.....06.....00.....08.....14

Varsity
Amador Valley.....07.....00.....07.....14.....28
Freedom..............07.....03.....07.....14.....31

For Freedom, they ran 21 times for 155 yards, had two interceptions, two fumbles punted four times and had only five yards in penalities and seven first downs and 22 passes for 133 yards..
Amador Valley missed one field goal, ran up 160 yards on 34 carries, passed 25 times for 258 yards, were intercepted three times , fumbled once, punted four times had 20 yards in penalities and 15 first downs.. Now Amador Valley had a chance to score a second time in the first quarter, but Jones on a rollout to the left elected to pass inside the 10 yard line, but Freedom Picked off the pass and stopped a possible scoring drive.

Anyone know anything about Aptos? Saw they beat a Salinas team and hung in there against a good Mitty team. Can they give Bellarmine a run for their money on Friday?

NEW LINK http://espn.go.com/moresports/story...lege-referee-field-incident-used-racial-slurs

Two defensive backs from John Jay High School's football team are suspended — and could face criminal charges — after they teamed up to blindside a referee at the end of a football game in central Texas this weekend.

The two players were suspended from both the school and the football team after they converged on a back judge near the end of Friday night's game, in an act that was evidently inspired by feelings that the official had made a bad call. The local police department says it's investigating.

Nearly 7 million people have viewed video of the incident, which shows one player sprinting toward and knocking the back judge to the ground — followed closely by the other player, who leveled his helmet as he struck the fallen man.

The incident took place during a game at Marble Falls High School, northwest of Austin; the players under scrutiny are from John Jay High, in San Antonio's large Northside Independent School District.

Read more at: http://abc13.com/news/investigation-underway-after-ref-hit-by-football-players/971933/

.

Malik Henry went from Westake HS to IMG Acadamy last Jan. left IMG late spring/early summer. Enrolled at LB Poly about a week before the 2015 season started. And was just cleared to play in Poly's 3 rd game of the season this Friday.

Compare that to athletically motivated transfers in the NCS and SJS. Funny stuff.

Friday night saw a real surprise and a some big surprise's as we go into week three...

THE PICKS
Piedmont 32 Moreau Catholic 26......Final score.... MC 55 Piedmont 9....Totally unexpected, but take a look at what MC has done....MC 33 St. Mary's of Albany 14, MC 51 Mt.Eden 0 and now MC 55 Piedmont 9....this victory over Piedmont changes every thing for MC....

San Ramon valley 33 Logan 21.........Final Score....Logan 24 San Ramon Valley 17.....this is the second time now that Logan has dumped the Wolves in the preseason...Logan looked pretty good at the Pittsburg Jamboree, but SRV on paper looked impressive with a hard running back and a big line to open lanes.

Amador Valley 27 Freedom 21.....Final Score.....Freedom 31 Amador Valley 28.....what happened....The Falcon receivers on the first play of the game got behind the Don's defender and with 11:45 on the clock, Freedom scored on a 63 yard bomb and then to make tings worse when it looked like Amador Valley had the game in the bag when they pulled ahead 28-24 with nine seconds left on the clock, Sweeney fired a 62 yard pass that turned into a hook and ladder play and caught the Don's by surprise and it was Freedom 31-Amador Valley 28 in a wild finish..

Livermore 28 Golden valley (Merced) 7.....Final Score.... Golden Valley 30 Livermore 20....After two wins in a row, were the cowboys riding on a high and did Golden valley cash in on it...

Pittsburg 49 Monte vista 28.....Final Score..... Monte Vista 49 Pittsburg 42...The Pirates ran into a Mustang team that would not quit and this pick sure back fired....This game began to go back and forth but Monte Vista
would not let up and Pittsburg started too slow...this has to be one of the early upsets along with San Ramon Valley and the bombing of Piedmont..

Cardinal Newman 35 clayton valley charter 30.....Final score .....CVC 28 CN 0......Without Brookshire on the lead for CN, it looked bad from the start, Coupled with a hard running Jackson who racked up 186 yards for CVC, one has to wonder if Brookshire was in the game, would it have made any difference, but it might have been 28-21????

HIGH SCORING GAMES
With all the new adjustments on blocking and tackling, I think that we are going to see more and more high scoring games. This is what happened Friday night..

Campolindo 42 Deer Valley 29
Freedom 31 Amador Valley 28
Monte vista 49 Pittsburg 42
W.C. Wood 49 Bishop O'Dowd 45
Foothill 55 Stagg of Stockton 34
Pinole Valley 41 College Park 32

I think her name is Tina Hay....

she is the Australian girl who started off the AAU season on the Cal Stars Elite team before ending up at JBS.

I had assumed she was going to Miramonte until she moved to JBS, then I just figured she would end up at Antelope.

BUT a buddy of mine had mentioned to me that he had heard from another coach that she was working out with the Piedmont coach.

Does anybody know where she ended up enrolling and going to HS at? or is she back in Australia?

McNair WR Derion Grim has de-committed from Boise State and is now pledged to Nebraska. He visited Lincoln over the weekend.

https://norcalpreps.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1802728

Based on my review of a wide variety of sources, including the spammed e-mails I have received over the last 90 days, I have concluded that the long awaited moment has finally arrived. I hereby declare in my official capacity that there are now more youth basketball programs than there are youth basketball players.

Manteca 2016 PF Kenny Wooten has committed to Nevada. Josh Gershon was the first to report.

I was told some Chicago teams are coming out to the Bay Area in December to play, teams include Whitney Young, Simeon and others.

Anyone hear/know about this?

Here is the schedule for week two. Picks are due by 3:00 PM on Friday.

Bellarmine at Del Oro (Game of the Week)
Cardinal Newman at Clayton Valley Charter
Servite at De La Salle
Marin Catholic at St. Ignatius
Piedmont at Moreau Catholic
Central Catholic at St. Mary's-Stockton
Rocklin at Whitney
Palma at St. Francis-Mountain View
Riordan at Sacred Heart Prep
Notre Dame-Sherman Oaks at Serra

Good game, Notre Dame hasn't been able to stop the Padre offense. Serra gets the ball to open the 2nd half. ND has broken a few long runs, but hasn't really sustained long drives.

I decided to take advantage of last's night's postponement and relocation and made the drive out to Rutherford Stadium tonight. Both team's are 2-0 coming in. Sparse crowd so far, but nice atmosphere. Teams just finished warmups and kickoff should be shortly. I'll provide updates when I can.

Donovan Blythe, the Director of Blythe's Basketball, will be running two FREE skills clinics for 5th-8th grade girls and boys October 3rd and 10th at Eastside Prep in East Palo Alto. Donovan is also head trainer for Kobe Bryant's Nike Rise cmap in China, where he just spent a month running a number of Nike-sponsored camps for Kobe and former NBA player and Chinese star Yi Jianlian.

Days: October 3rd and 10th (both Saturdays)
Time: 9am-11am
Where: Eastside Prep, 1041 Myrtle St., East Palo Alto

Contact: donovan@blythesbasketball.com, 650-759-4546
Website: www.blythesbasketball.com

Donovan Blythe, the Director of Blythe's Basketball, will be running two FREE skills clinics for 5th-8th grade boys and girls October 3rd and 10th at Eastside Prep in East Palo Alto. Donovan is also head trainer for Kobe Bryant's Nike Rise cmap in China, where he just spent a month running a number of Nike-sponsored camps for Kobe and former NBA player and Chinese star Yi Jianlian.

Days: October 3rd and 10th (both Saturdays)
Time: 9am-11am
Where: Eastside Prep, 1041 Myrtle St., East Palo Alto

Contact: donovan@blythesbasketball.com, 650-759-4546
Website: www.blythesbasketball.com

I like this match-up because this will tell me where my Bulldogs stand. Enterprise, just like Vacaville, is coming of a rout loosing their last game, Enterprise lost to Whitney which scored 54 points on Oak Ridge only to loose by one point and Vacaville got rolled by Oak Ridge. Time will tell if both Whitney and Oak Ridge are the real deal.
The only bad about this game is the huge, almost 3 hour, roadtrip for my Bulldogs which I hope doesn't affect them too much. It'll be interesting to see if these two teams are at about the same level. I'm ready for this roadtrip!

DEFENSE..DEFENSE.DEFENSE!!

GO VACAVILLE BULLDOGS!!!

CN put up the Cardinal fight against St. Mary's last week and came up a little short on a 2-point conversion to win it. Last year CN lost to St. Mary's by 3 TD's.

CN also lost to State team Clayton Valley last year by 3 TD's.

So I'm thinking CN has a chance to put CVC on guard this Friday night at CVC, and maybe pull off the upset. Could be the game of the week.

Any thoughts?

Because of the heat and fires, Bullard will travel to Sacramento tomorrow. Game starts at 730pm