pump premiere canceled.

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SoCalHoops Recruiting News

Double Pump Fall Premiere
Tournament Canceled--(Sept. 23, 2002)

	What:	Double Pump Fall Premier Tournament
	When:	..........Canceled..... Sept. 27-29
	Where:	Lynwood HS
	Who:	32-40 Travel Teams

Wow.....That was short-lived. The Double Pump Fall Premiere Tournament, a late-entrant into the fall exposure world of tournaments which has only been played twice previously, is now no more and the tournament scheduled for this weekend has been canceled. We fear that like so many other events which were geared around visiting Division I college coaches, that the new NCAA rules will do in other tournaments during periods of time which were formerly called "exposure" periods.... While that may or may not be the case (e.g., Dinos' Fall Hoops Classic Tournament, while smaller, was still a valuable event for kids to play and for scouting services to watch), the fact is that without the Division I coaches in attendance, the popularity of such events is not as great as it might otherwise have been. Is that a good thing? We'll leave that to others. Those who want to play will continue to do so whether the coaches are there or not, and those who want exposure, well, the NCAA decreed that the fall is now off-limits, and in truth, those who know about the history of the NCAA "exposure" period legislation know that the fall period was actually never intended by the NCAA to be an evaluation period, but was instead supposed to be used for home visits with prospects. So, it's in-season evaluations and summer exposure only as far as D-I is concerned.

In any event, Jan Bryant of Double Pump sent us the announcement about this event being canceled yesterday, but we didn't have a chance to post it sooner. If you were planning on attending this weekend, find something else to watch. While there were approximately 20+ teams that had committed, evidently given the costs associated with hosting this tournament, the Pumps decided that it was not worth all the trouble (not to mention insurance, gym rental fees, travel costs, etc), and they've decided instead to focus their energies on their five college-level exhibition teams which will be playing during the NCAA D-I college pre-season. Those five exhibition teams will be on the road from October 31 through the end of November, and each of the teams is slated to play approximately 17 games each, and it's almost a full-time job for Jan and Phil Bryant and Darren Cohen of Double Pump to do all of the travel and organizational tasks associated with those teams.

This is not the first event that the Pumps experimented with and which only existed for a couple of years. Those with longer memories will recall that in the spring, the Pumps also used to host a senior all-star game, specifically the California All-Star Classic, which ran for a few years, but then was canceled about three years ago. Like most things in the world of prep and pre-college hoops, things change, events come and go. The Pumps will of course continue to focus their energies on spring and summer, with events like the Big Time and Best of Summer as well as their own West Coast All-Star Camps and their Double Pump All Stars and Pump N Run travel teams. But for now the bottom line is no tournament this weekend.