Summer Reset: Barnstormers 15U
Editor’s note: Ahead of the July live recruiting periods, we will be looking back at what teams have accomplished and what they look to do in the coming month. The survey is filled out my program directors and coaches. Team: …
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Continue ReadingEditor’s note: Ahead of the July live recruiting periods, we will be looking back at what teams have accomplished and what they look to do in the coming month. The survey is filled out my program directors and coaches.
Team: Iowa Barnstormers 15s
Coach: Greg Stephen
Record: 25-8
Best tournament finish(es): Played in championship games in all but two of our tournaments this year. Won championships at The Rock Classic, Prep Hoops Battle of the Lakes, and the adidas Silver Gauntlet in Dallas… runner-up at the adidas Gold Gauntlet in Atlanta, and the NY2LA Swish ’N Dish.
Team MVP: Jake Hilmer from North Linn, who has really made this team go. Jake isn’t our biggest or strongest athlete, but he plays with incredible pace, and is always looking ahead. He’s playing at a really high level, and really makes everyone better around him.
Biggest surprise (player or team attribute/accomplishment): To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect out of this group in the spring. We added several new pieces over the past year, and I knew we had a lot of talent, but I wasn’t sure how well they would mesh together. They’re really surpassed expectations, and were ranked as a Top-10 team in the country for about 5 or 6 straight weeks, a big accomplishment. As far as an individual surprise, Derek Krogmann has really impressed this spring. He leads us in both scoring and rebounding, and I keep thinking he’ll get beat up as we play against bigger, stronger, more athletic bigs, but he has a knack for scoring in the paint and his motor just doesn’t stop. He’s going to have a heck of a career at West Delaware.
Best defender: The addition of Kenny Quinn (Hoover’s starting PG as a freshman) has really improved this group’s defense. I’ve never seen a high school on-ball defender handle ball screens better than Kenny… he’s tenacious.
Best team moment: After we won the Silver Gauntlet in Dallas, adidas moved this group up to the Gold Gauntlet for the next weekend in Atlanta, and we made it all the way to the Championship game, losing to Dream Vision (CA) by 1 in the finals. That was a fun run.
Evaluation of how your team preformed in the spring: I thought we really exceeded expectations early, but we knew we had the talent to compete. This is a fun group. There isn’t another team in Iowa that is as tight-knit on or off the court. We’ve got a core of guys (Patrick McCaffery, Jackson Molstead, Trey Hutcheson) who have been together for a long time, and some newcomers like Noah Hart (Waukee) and Kenny who really added a lot. The thing about this group- we don’t have any kids who have peaked and are in the prime of their career, their arrows are all still pointing up. To have some success and still be talking about potential speaks volumes for how good this group could be the next couple years.
July schedule: adidas has invited their top-8 teams from the Gauntlet Series to play in a Gauntlet Finale in Spartanburg during the first NCAA Live period. We were really excited to get asked to play in that, especially since our 16s will be there that week, too. After that, we’ll go to Milwaukee for the NY2LA Summer Jam, which is always loaded, then we’ll finish the summer in Las Vegas for the adidas Summer Championships.
July goals (for team and/or individual players): The Live period in July for 15s is typically one of the first times college coaches will get a chance to see these guys. The coaches are usually looking at the older guys in the spring, but they have a bigger window to see some of the upcoming talent in the summer. So, we hope we can put together a couple nice runs. We’d love to win a few games at the adidas event in South Carolina. We know every game will be a battle there. For us to win games in places like SC, Milwaukee or Vegas, the guys really need to focus on the defensive end and find ways to get stops. This group can score at a high level, we already know that. So once they can prove they can defend consistently, they’ll be a tough draw for anyone.