PHILADELPHIA _ It looked big-time, felt big-time. If you were looking for high-level college basketball prospects, this was the place to be one weekend morning in June. Up on the walking track above the basketball court at Jefferson University _ under the banner noting that Jefferson's coach, Herb Magee, is enshrined in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame _ there were plenty of big-time coaches.
Auburn's Bruce Pearl stood right under the banner, St. Joseph's assistant Justin Scott just to his right. Temple's new head coach, Aaron McKie, stood to Pearl's left. Just to McKie's left was Connecticut's Dan Hurley. All the local Division I coaching staffs were in the building.
Down on the court, major talents from Camden High and a Florida powerhouse went at each other. On another court, Catholic League power Archbishop Wood was in a battle. Next up, Roman Catholic High. You could easily stock a Final Four team from the talent in the building that morning.
It was big-time high school hoops _ 73 teams in all _ on Henry Avenue. And it was just what the NCAA had in mind.
If NCAA folks wanted to take power away from AAU programs in the wake of several recent recruiting scandals _ four assistant college coaches and six others associated with college basketball were arrested in 2017 for paying players to attend certain schools _ one of their solutions, designated by a high-powered NCAA commission chaired by Condoleezza Rice, was more high school hoops in the summer.
"The levels of corruption and deception are now at a point that they threaten the very survival of the college game as we know it," the Rice commission stated in its report, which also recommended the NBA do away with "one-and-done" rules preventing high school players from going straight to the NBA. The NBA is expected to do this, possibly by the 2022 draft.
