High school basketball, and more specifically grassroots circuits, is the Amazon rainforest of the basketball world. A wealth of natural hoops knowledge sitting at your fingertips, hidden in the foray of unexplored jungle. Watching college and international basketball is a familiar space for most; tape is accessible, stats are advanced, broadcasts are professional. I love college basketball, it is the single type of basketball I watch most, but it would be foolhardy to pretend it does not have serious flaws as a tool for draft evaluation.
You don’t have to look very far back to find examples of ill-fated pre-draft college seasons resulting in incomplete evaluations come draft day. How many teams regret passing on Jalen Duren and AJ Griffin just one year later? My guess would be quite a few. College basketball is great, but it’s limited. A season really only offers one context, from role to health or surrounding talent. Every cycle we talk about how context matters in projecting forward future NBA roles, so it would make sense that seeing prospects in additional pre-draft contexts gives a clearer picture.
The only issue with that is, where do you even start? Pretty much every prospect plays high school basketball, but only some of those games come on TV, and some of those games are in the Overtime Elite league, which is like high school, but also not, but also has some actual high school teams playing in the league.
Then we get to grassroots basketball, more commonly (and I think incorrectly?) referred to as AAU. There are three major shoe circuits, with each having their own events throughout the summer and a few inter-circuit events sprinkled in along the way. On top of the enormous amount of teams scattered across multiple leagues, team rosters and jersey numbers can be more difficult to find than you expect.
All in all, those hurdles make the prospect of scouting pre-college basketball feel a little unapproachable. As I began my yearly summer catch up this year, I figured it was time to finally, truly, dive straight into the wilderness. The result has been a newfound love for youth basketball, though that did come with a few hurdles along the way.
The goal of this piece is to help people who are looking to understand youth hoops find it all a little less overwhelming, while hopefully helping you skip a little legwork. We’ll go through a few of the things I think are foundationally important to understanding the general landscape, and a few helpful resources for when the process becomes confounding.
High School Basketball
At its most basic level, high school basketball is pretty straightforward to understand. The vast majority of schools look a lot like the schools the general public grew up in, large student bodies and a competitive sporting environment. The difference between public and private school in basketball terms is about the same as it is in the real world: they are very similar, with private schools having a few more (financially driven) opportunities.
The biggest private schools play their own national circuit, NIBC, as a way of garnering greater national exposure. The highest end private schools are littered with NBA talent, but teams like Duncanville, Camden and Wheeler are public schools with three of the best prospects in the class. Top flight private schools or academies have a competitive advantage in their depth and national presence, but the high end talent is relatively spread out over both public and private schools.
Full games are generally easier to find for high school vs grassroots, though the bigger academies like Link or IMG have an embarrassment of riches in that department. For public schools, almost every district has a team that records every game to put on YouTube. If you are lucky, that team has prospects, and now you’ve lost an entire evening to the doldrums of AAAA North Texas high school basketball.
GEICO High School Basketball Nationals
The GEICO Nationals tournament is the best of the best, consisting mostly of private basketball academies like Sunrise Christian and Montverde. Public schools are able to receive an invite, but laws differ from state to state regarding public schools playing national competition or against private academies.
As a general rule, this is the high school basketball holy grail. At no other event will you find such a dense collection of NBA talent, and the games are aired on National TV (and later uploaded to YouTube via helpful third parties). It’s a great event, one that showcases future lottery picks every season.
State Champions Invitational
The State Champions Invitational is a newer event that was created to showcase state-champion public school programs on a larger scale. Inclusion is still dependent on the aforementioned state laws on national competition, but the event is always stacked with high-end talent. These games are aired on ESPN and their family of networks, but are more difficult to find in the Youtube ether. Hopefully, as the event gains more attention and a larger public audience, that changes.
Overtime Elite
The reputation of Overtime Elite precedes itself with a billing as the next great basketball developmental program. While there are continued questions as to OTE’s future viability as a pre-draft destination (especially when compared to more established, pro-oriented programs like the G League Ignite and the NBL Next Stars), their viability as a pre-college developmental environment should not be questioned.
Their site is clean, they have basic and legible stats, and their games are often available on Youtube or Amazon Prime, with a direct from the game box score. That kind of accessibility is unfounded in this space, and something that gives OTE a leg up in the high school basketball world.
Grassroots Basketball
Oh, the unknown. Grassroots basketball is a bit of a black hole at times, but with each passing year a new resource pops up to make things a little bit brighter. The scene is dominated by three major circuits, where teams play against each other in circuit events throughout the summer.
There are leagues for nearly all ages with 17U meant to consist of players entering their senior year of high school, though some players choose to play up a year (and in the case of AJ Dybantsa, dominate while doing so). Sometimes the only tape you are able to find on Youtube is two years old from when they played 16U, but film is film, I will not discriminate.
There are quite a few independent teams that are not a part of either shoe circuit, but will commonly play events like Who Wants The Smoke where they match up against shoe circuit clubs. Which circuit is which matters really only in what teams will play at which event, trying to find worthwhile value in comparing competition or talent level feels unproductive. Each league has their fair share of talent, though one may get more attention than the rest.
Really, what matters most is what teams play on which circuit. Each circuit has their own nuances in structure but when you boil it down, film is still film. Thankfully selectbasketballusa.com made a helpful list of the teams in each league shown below.
Nike EYBL
The Nike Elite Youth Basketball League has long been seen as the cream of the crop, and for good reason. Their track record of producing NBA talent is unparalleled in the space, and while it has become more competitive that track record of dominance is noteworthy. This year, eight of the top ten RSCI recruits played on the EYBL circuit, with top pick contenders Ron Holland, Matas Buzelis, Isaiah Collier, DJ Wagner, Justin Edwards, Omaha Biliew and many others. The roster is deep.
Adidas 3SSB
The Adidas 3 Stripe Select Basketball circuit is well established with a lineage of NBA talent. While not as publicly discussed as EYBL, 3SSB has a deep roster of high major talent led by T10 recruit Ja’Kobe Walter, with Dink Pate, Baye Fall, Reed Sheppard, TJ Power and (personal favorite) KJ Lewis. Overall, a solid league with decent tape accessibility, though their official site does leave much to be desired.
Under Armour UAA
The Boys Under Armour Association is the final leg of the well known circuits, with 3ssb being its closest comparison. Led by potential lottery pick Stephon Castle, UAA boasts yet another deep roster of potentially impactful freshmen like Caleb Foster, Elmarko Jackson, Blue Cain and more. Unfortunately, compared to the other leagues team/roster info can be incredibly difficult to find. On the plus side, the Middlesex Magic youtube page is a treasure trove of tape, like finding an oasis in the desert.
New Balance Pro16
The New Balance Pro16 league is the newest of the four circuits, and while they may not have as much established, highly ranked prospects, the competition remains strong. Gehrig Normand and Dylan James are the two RSCI T100 prospects on the circuit with a growing collection of future prospects. Internet resources remain limited but are comparable with the bigger leagues.
Resources
Now we have established the general framework of the leagues we are working with, it’s time to dig a little deeper. Youth basketball is a mess of individual leagues and conferences, finding places with consolidated information is a must. Knowing who to watch, what teams they are on, the numbers they wear and the teammates they have is a more complicated task than it seems.
RSCI Rankings
This is a fairly obvious place to start. This may not be breaking news, nearly every top draft pick is a highly-rated recruit coming out of high school. The rankings are by no means a be-all-end-all, Keegan Murray wasn’t ranked and ended up the fourth overall pick (!), but it is a great starting point. If you look at late risers like Jeremy Sochan and Patrick Williams or sophomore studs like Jaden Ivey and Bennedict Mathurin you will find them ranked in the Top 100 entering college. It’s a long list, but it is chalk full of NBA players throughout it. If you are beginning to create your watch list, the RSCI Top 100 is the place to start.
MADE Hoops Power Rankings
This is a stupendous resource. The site has a paywall for future class rankings, but their 2023 rankings are public. The actual rankings themselves are nice, but the real draw is that the board lists not only the high school team for each prospect, but the grassroots team as well. That kills an enormous amount of leg work searching google for players and teams, and gives you a great starting point on what high school and grassroots teams should be at the top of your watch list. Great stuff.
The Season Ticket
Now that you have the players you are looking to see and the teams they play on, The Season Ticket site, and more specifically The Circuit (a subheading on the site) is just about a one-stop -shop for rosters, team schedules and rankings for all age groups, both high school and grassroots (you can even sometimes find a box score!). You can dive into any league you want, though EYBL and 3SSB rosters are the most filled out.
Finding actual team rosters with numbers and game dates is awesome. It can be incredibly hard to pin down what games players played in, the times they took place, and the teams they played against. Once you pick your team, there should be more than enough here to familiarize yourself with the surroundings.
Cerebro Sports
Cerebro is a basketball site with Mark Cuban as a public investor and the infamous draft twitter stylings of the illustrious Prospect Development Web. There is an enormously steep paywall for individuals attempting to use the platform, but the free resources available are more than worth an initial email signup.
You are able to see the five most recent events for each player, which is incredibly helpful for international and OTE prospects (where an entire season is listed as one event). For US based high schoolers, the stats are a little more hit and miss, with some prospects showing stats for over 20 games and others less than 10.
You are able to see the Top 10 performers for each event, but you can’t just search for an event, you have to select it through a player’s profile. This can be a little tricky at times, but is worth a few extra clicks in order to see the bigger picture of top performers for any given event. A very cool tool, but one that requires some corporate overhead to make the cost worthwhile.
How Context Changes Stats
This is a more general bullet point to end off the section, but an important one to consider when looking at statistical output in high school and grassroots basketball. The first thing, and most consistent across levels, is that teenagers are not good three point shooters, and they often have a more difficult shot diet than they will in the league.
Shooting in the low 30s on good volume in high school is a good thing, very few players (with the necessary athletic gifts) are able to score efficiently on jumpers as a 17-year-old. This is why AJ Griffin never should have fallen out of the top seven on draft night, but I digress.
The difference between high school and grassroots is not a cut and dry one. Grassroots teams tend to play at a higher pace with a more free-flowing style of game with high school representing a more structured context. Statistically speaking, that added pace can affect numbers to a degree, but team context plays a much larger factor.
Sean Stewart was the best player on the Florida Rebels, but at Montverde he was the sixth man the majority of his senior season. Omaha Biliew was the only high-profile recruit at Waukee his senior year, but played for Mokan Elite with fellow T100 prospects Cameron Carr, Trey Green and 2024 five-star John Bol. Playstyle differences matter, and each context tells you something unique in that regard, but you have to know the difference in on-court role and context to see it.
Searching for Tape
This is the single most stressful part of pre-college draft scouting. Finding quality tape, ideally for free, is a more difficult task than it may seem. Struggling to find full games for prospects was the largest barrier to entry for me: there is nothing I hate more than being in the mood to watch tape, only to waste precious time trying to find it. My philosophy when scouting is to maximize the time spent watching tape, and it is hard to do that when you’re searching for a needle in a haystack.
I decided to take a different approach this summer, getting ahead of my actual tape watching and accumulating film for as much of the RSCI Top 100 as possible. The process was a long and arduous one, but I have been able to find full games for every single prospect in the Top 100, with most prospects having a full game of high school and grassroots.
I have hyperlinked the games I could find in the below excel sheet, just click on the team name on the far right and dive straight in. A quick note: I tried not to link the same game twice for prospects on the same team and sprinkled in condensed videos when I ran out of full game tape. If you are itching for more of a certain prospect (or the link for the player is a shorter video), look for other prospects that played on the same team, you should find what you’re looking for.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aiQO8DqFD9zT47gdtQrj7oo8cbqsrZlJrkC3a5NeWeo/edit?usp=sharing
YouTube
YouTube, the one and only. There is no other place with free youth basketball tape, but you do need to know how to search. Finding actual game tape is not as easy as typing “Ron Holland Full Game” into your search bar (though with better video titles and captions, it could be!), you will need to be smart about your searches. I’ll go through a few helpful rules I try to follow when searching for games.
Know Your Date Ranges
Grassroots games take place over the summer before a prospect’s senior year, meaning all videos should be roughly a year old. Very rarely are games uploaded months after the fact, so it is pretty safe to assume the NJ Scholars video uploaded in April is not the tape you’re looking for.
High school basketball takes place during the year, so those games should all be less than a year old, and going back a year will take you into the previous season. That can be fine, for both grassroots or high school, if the prospect you are trying to watch was actually on the team the year prior.
Know What Prospects Look Like
Jersey numbers are a figment of your imagination. They will be listed on the circuit or on other sites, but they are rarely consistent (particularly in grassroots). My personal best practice: google image search “[player name] [team name]”.
I will look for jersey numbers they’ve worn, if they wear a t-shirt, if they have a recognizable hairstyle, general build, anything to help. If you’re in doubt, search a highlight video and compare movement styles. Sometimes good tape takes a little digging.
Start Specific
Youtube searches are a finicky business, and using too many keywords can be overly exclusionary. With that said, sometimes searching “Dennis Evans Hillcrest Basketball” takes you directly to the video you are looking for. Start specific, and eliminate keywords as you go, until you get down to “[team name] basketball”.
Know When to Keep Scrolling
This one is a little on the finicky side, but sometimes scrolling a little longer is all it takes. There are so many different age groups and years of competition to sift through, and it was very common for quality, full game videos to be buried 50 videos deep in a search. If you are still seeing videos with the team name you searched, keep going.
Try Google
This one is kind of weird, and honestly I am not sure it “works” from a search engine perspective, but going into the Google videos search bar and looking for games helped me find a few that I just couldn’t seem to get on YouTube. There are at least no “recommended” videos you have to skip past when scrolling.
BallerTV
The single best publicly available accumulation of high school basketball games, BallerTV is certainly worth a look in your search for tape. The pricing isn’t spectacular, but they do allow you to purchase individual events. You’ll get access to teams that are harder to find (like Dennis Evans on Team Inland) and inter-circuit matchups you won’t find elsewhere. The interface isn’t as smooth as your typical streaming service, but the juice is worth the squeeze if you purchase one of the more star-studded events.
Twitch
Twitch is the single best place to find EYBL tape, you can find the entirety of Peach Jam on there now, but it is only for the 2023 year (next year’s class). Streams air live on the platform and are available to watch for an extended period of time after, but not an indefinite one.
Sifting through the different streams and the games within them can be tedious, but that is a small price to pay for a literal metric ton of prospect tape. You just have to do it in a more timely manner than a midsummer cram session.
Parting Thoughts
High school and grassroots basketball is awesome and overwhelming simultaneously. There are more names than you could ever keep track of, yet people seem to do it all the time? Following the ins and outs of future high school classes is an enormous task, and that enormity can make the space feel unapproachable.
You don’t have to live and breathe grassroots hoops to gain value from watching it, or even joy. Basketball is still basketball, and finding quality tape of players throughout their development journey and in differing contexts is invaluable. Hopefully with a little framing the greater picture of youth basketball is a little clearer. Sometimes to make a circuit work you just have to connect a few dots.
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