big time announcement

8th Annual adidas
Las Vegas Big Time Tournament

Quick Links:

Teams By Pools

Teams Alphabetically

Pool Play Schedule by Team

Top 56 Teams "Open Bracket"

2002 Teams by State

Schedule For Monday

Schedule For Tuesday

July 22, 23, 24, 25 & 26, 2002

Las Vegas, Nevada

344 Teams, 4,500 athletes

NCAA Certified

Every Division I, and most D-II, D-III, NAIA, JUCO and probably just about every pro GM.

When adidas, Sonny Vaccaro, Larry McKay, David and Dana Pump, Chris Rivers, and the entire contingent of people responsible for the adidas Las Vegas Big Time say they want the biggest tournament ever, they are not fooling around. . They wanted big, they're going do it BIG. Last year was big, and this year is even slightly bigger.

As we said last year: "It's almost surreal when you think about it. Huge hotels. Big entertainment. Ridiculously hot temperatures outside. The nicest high school gyms anywhere in the country. The best high school basketball players and college prospects in the U.S., all doing their thing for five days in front of every kind of college coach imaginable. . . . only in America. . . What a country. . . . "

This year, the adidas Big Time guys (and we mean Larry McKay who runs the event, Steve Beck who designs and runs the official website for the Big Time, and Domanic Clark, who runs their media relations department) have done it again, and they will organize one of the best tournaments ever. The official site has one minor glitch for some of us old Netscape Communicator users, the ones who refuse to switch to MSIE or Netscape 6.+: If you use Netscape's 4.7 browsers or lower, the links sometimes work and sometimes don't. . . . we don't know why, but it works fine if you use IE....

And while we will focus our coverage during the tournament on the California-based teams, which is going to be a huge task, we'll also mostly cover the other top teams that are in the "Open" Bracket, meaning the top 56 teams in the tournament. College coaches, however, won't be nearly as picky, and you'll see them all over town at the tournament.

We'll post up the team pool listings and the pool play assignments shortly for those of you who are browser-impaired (like us, we prefer Netscape's cleaner design to that of the MS product). In the meantime, here's the official press release describing the tournament.