In Reply to: Re: AAU vs the European system... posted by confused442 on April 15, 2024 at 15:07:45
At PSB Select, we practice twice per week for 2-3 hours total as a team and only allow our teams to play two tournaments per month on average. I’m not saying we have the perfect formula, but we are very conscious of the practice to game ratio, which USA Youth Basketball has a whole set of awesome guidelines and a guidebook on.
However, the majority of AAU teams don’t practice enough and play too many games, and this happens for a couple of reasons.
Number one, which goes back to misplaced focus on winning, but often times teams simply want the most talented kids possible, so they’ll take players from all over the place regardless of where they live because they believe talent is more important that skills.
This situation then makes it virtually impossible to practice because there is not a time or place that works for the whole team. Instead, teams simply go to tournaments, roll the ball out, and try to “out-talent” the other team.