The Showcase -- Pictures and Video

The Showcase

Rob and I believed that the Showcase would have a really positive effect at Nationals, but in no way did we anticipate the credibility it would bring to the overall event. The coverage at the local news level as well as the credibility the New York Times article has brought is amazing. I will be honest I bought the New York Times that Sunday and put it in the car, then a couple of days later when I went to find the article I was stunned it was on the front page. I talked with Joe before the tournament and when I told him about the Showcase, he agreed to come and check it out. To stay in context he was stunned by what he saw on Wednesday evening.

We are in the process of pulling together all the high quality pictures or video from the showcase as we want to put together a significant website section to help us get more media coverage next year, more scouts next year and maybe even a title sponsor. If you or someone in your program has any pictures or video we can use please forward them to me tim@flattmail.com

Also if anyone has a picture of Geno Auriemma at the game Friday Night at John Marshall I would like to get a hold of a copy of that as well.

Results and Medals

Results if you see incomplete or incorrect results please let Cheryl know. If you left before the awards ceremony and would like your medals and plaques sent please contact Rob.

Official and Christian Character Complaints

This year seemed to go off very well from our prospective and from what we heard from you. Cheryl and I will spend the next few weeks recovering. Yesterday Cheryl read through the complaints and we were very encouraged to see that complaints about officiating were at an all time low. I am not sure officiating was necessarily a lot better but I believe the more experienced programs and coaches become people realize we need to focus on what we can control.

Other the other side we noticed that there were plenty of forms filled out in relation to teams handling things in unchrist-like manner. This may be a reaction to what I said in the coaches meeting. Bit as we talked we decided that this could be a real positive if it is handled correctly. Here is the plan – we will be typing up all of the complaints over the next few weeks and we will forward them to the program that is being accused of improper behavior. The idea is to let the program be aware of the perception that they created in that circumstance. We believe this will allow teams to evaluate what is being said to us. We are not looking for teams to get back to us with answers as most are isolated situations that coaches and boards will be able to use as teaching and correctional tools. If you haven’t filed a complaint about another teams actions during a game and you feel like it was really something that was wrong please send me an e-mail. I will forward all complaints. No please hear this I will not accept anonymous complaints but I will withhold your name and information when I forward it if you feel that it may cause problems in the future.

Scores Please -- Nominations

We are not getting some scores called in and are unable to reach many coaches. Please help and call the scores in.

Award Nominations can be e-mailed by sending an e-mail to nationals@flattmail.com including all information requested on the form.

First Day Over

I am wrapping things up for the day and it seems like everything went pretty well.

Here are some things I need to point out:

Honorable Mentions will be posted before I go to bed (on players blog).

Programs are in at the convention center.

You can still buy tickets for the Pizza Party Tuesday at Registration and at the coaches registration on Wednesday. Don't miss out you will be sorry.

We ran out of reguar t-shirts and started selling the showcase t-shirts, they will be available all day Tuesday. Thanks for supporting this great event.

I will not be avialable until late morning.

Have a great day.

Time to get FIRED UP

I am looking forward to seeing you all (a little Oklahoman for some of you Yankees) tomorrow.

We have three great coaches meetings to choose from – (actually they are all the same but I am trying to make it sound really exciting).

Coaches Meetings --11:00, 3:00 (16/18 pick one) 9:45PM (10/12/14)

I talked to a few coaches tonight at the convention center and I guess there was some discussion if I would have some new stories for the coaches meeting. I know coaches have a lot to worry about this week so I want to relieve some stress right up front, worry not I have a couple new stories. Below is a post I put on the players blog.

Welcome to Oklahoma City
It looks like great weather this week 60-70’s during the day and a nice crisp mid 30’s at night. We plan the schedule, God plans the weather.
Teams have begun arriving and 300 teams either in town or on the way to town it looks to be a FANTASTIC week of basketball.
Player Registration, Coach Registration and t-shirt pick up and sales will open at 9:00 AM tomorrow.
Team USA Registration opens at 10:00.
Check out the special personalized t-shirts design to commemorate the 1st Annual National Tournament Showcase. This year it was too late to get a sponsor for the Showcase so we designed the shirts as a way to help offset the $12,000 extra cost to run this Showcase. We hope you will like the shirts and lend a helping hand by purchasing one.
All registration is open until 9:00 PM.
There are meetings for:
Team USA Noon (16/18) 9:00 (10/12/14)
Coaches Meetings --11:00, 3:00 (16/18 pick one) 9:45PM (10/12/14)
All American and their coach – 10:30 PM

We look forward to seeing all of you,
Tim Flatt

Practice Gyms

If you need a practice gym on Monday call Rob at the Lighthouse 405-755-1975. He has courts to rent. Usually around $15 per hour.

Meeting Change

The third coaches meetings will be moved back to 9:45PM (originally 9:15)
This changes are to accommodate overlap with games on Monday.

Friday Update

Brackets are now in their final form. What that means is there will be no changes unless we made an administrational mistake. It also means that we have made the final changes without notification. If any changes are made do to our errors than we will post on both blogs and if they happen after the tournament starts we will contact the coaches involved.

Extra coaches’ badges – if you ordered extra badges and we received it, Cheryl confirmed it via e-mail. We had some issues with receiving e-mails so if you sent an e-mail and did not hear back please send it again to nationals@flattmail.com

I think most of the basics are set and our list for the next two days looks manageable so I am going to call it a night.

Brackets and Changes

We finished up brackets around 3:30 this morning (they are posted), I triple checked them but I am sure there are still some mistakes. We will go through them two more times this evening and catch all the gym and start time mistakes. What helps us if you look for the flow errors – follow your team through in every scenario (G12 can’t do this yet because I am still waiting to post until this Team USA stuff shorts itself out). Also I have made a dozen or so changes to seeding where it is an obvious mistake or if a team is scheduled to play a very familiar opponent in the first two games. I have two new ones to change B14 SATCH White and B16 Cincinnati Trailblazers – I am going to let Cheryl sleep in for a while to sleep for a while and I am telling you this because if you requested:

1) A simple game time change due to travel on Monday or Tuesday
2) A change because of a familiar opponent
3) Or an obvious seeding error (we beat them 3 times and you have them in front of us)
And it is not changed now, it is not scheduled to be changed – somehow in my mind I think I have already done it, so you need to contact me again. If I reject your request I will respond by e-mail, so hearing nothing from me does not mean I don’t like you and I am not going to make the change.

I am originally from the east coast (north) so I have a unique combination of Oklahoma friendliness and east coast honesty. Here is how this works out. I work very hard to work for you to make this a great experience for you and your kids; I will bend over backwards for you whenever possible. Now if you are unreasonable year after year and I get feed up with it and you make unreasonable requests – I just e-mail you and tell you I don’t like you and I am not going to make the change. It is so much easier this way. LOL Cheryl will read this post when she gets up and say “you are not allowed to make any more post when you are tired with me checking them first”

Important Meetings on Monday

There are 3 coaches meetings on Monday – Attendance is mandatory at one of the meetings. All meeting are at the ballroom on the east side of the convention center

11:00AM Coaches Meeting --Ages 16/18

12:00 Team USA – ages 16/18 for players and coaches

3:00PM Coaches Meeting -- 18(under) coaches that miss first meeting do to travel

8:30PM Team USA -- ages 10/12/14 for players and coaches

9:15PM Coaches Meeting 10/12/14 and any one who missed earlier

10:30PM All-American meeting

Coaches I know it is a lot of meetings and I hate it, rough day for me too I have 7 meetings to run and 4 games to coach, so trust me If I didn’t think they were crucial I would cancel all of them.

Boys18 Divsion II and III

I just finished the brackets for Boys 18 Division II and III seeding Brackets. Cheryl will create them while I am at practice (yes I still coach, at least try to during this time of year). When I get back I will double check gym assignmnets andRob will double check the seeding. We should have them posted by late evening.

I went to a couple of the new gyms this morning to make sure evrything was all set. We are really blessed we have 11 of our gyms are muliti-million dollar that have been built in the last 2 years.

Getting Close

Tonight we finished up all seeding games, except Boys 18 Division II and III. I am having some trouble configuring the seeding games into brackets. The plan is to have the finished seeding posted sometime before noon. Then to finish off the last two (listed above) on Wednesday. At that point I am going to have to change my focus to all of the stuff that is backing up, like coaches’ notebooks, overall schedule, gym notebooks and all sorts of other things that are popping up. I will get back to the brackets on Friday and try to finish them off by Saturday.
Here is what we need you to do with the seeding:

1) Look it over make sure it flows where you can tell where you go and who you will play based on a standard 8 team bracket. Sometimes we miss something like getting a game or seed number wrong.

2) Check for unexpected changes in the brackets. One of the issues is that after Rob finishes the seeding he gives it to me to put into seeding games. Due to the fact that we try to include everyone who wants to attend, there is never a set situation where 1 play 32. That is true in 32 team brackets but doesn’t work in 34, 40 and 42 team brackets which we have, so I have to make decisions which we call regional considerations. In essence if the brackets ended up with a Dallas team playing another Dallas area team, I move teams up or down slightly to avoid that situation. If it creates a situation that concerns you (about your team and only your team) e-mail us and explain it. Also if you match up in the first two rounds with a team you play a number of times during the year let us know.

3) Make sure that if your program has two teams in a division that we listed the right one in the right spot.

I have until the 7th to make changes, so please help to make sure we have them right.

Seeding

Coaches thank you very much for all of your seeding feedback. At this point we assume that everyone has had more than enough time to give us any important feedback. We are now moving to the next stage which is bracketing. We will be posting the bracket links on this blog when they are available.

Thanks,
Rob

Update

I spent most of the day recreating many of the documentation needed for brackets. There is a chance that in a few days they will be able to recover all my data but by that time we should be done. What is hurting me most is my e-mail address book, I feel crippled to not be able to fire of e-mails. But we are more than surviving.

The Map should be done tomorrow
The updated Rosters were posted today (Check your rosters again -- players blog)
The Team USA list was posted today
All-Americans were announced

The Girls 12 brackets were finished and the seeding was posted (we listed TBA for where the winners and losers go because we may not have enough girls for two team USA) so we have brackets for both 16 and 18 teams as well as seeding advancement for both and we will post the way it will go as soon as we know what will be the final number.

Boys 12 was corrected -- page one and two were flip flopped (pretty ugly --but it is fixed)

The Boys and Girls 16 brackets were finished today – I just checked the brackets and made a few corrections but it is 3:20 and I hate to post anything this late, so I will sleep and recheck one more time. At that point I will post the girls but the boys may have to wait for a little longer as we had three new teams want in the tournament today.

Saganaw MI Boys 16
Winston Salem, NC Girls 14
Central Missouri Girls 18 (we knew about them over the weekend)

So we won’t post the boys 16 until we see how that shakes out tomorrow.

I think I will tackle Boys 18 Division 1 and Boys 14 tomorrow. There is no chance of the numbers changing in those divisions and I won’t have to re-bracket.

All Americans and 3 Point Shooting Contest

We have posted the All-American selections on the player’s blog. The selection was much more complicated than it looked like it would be. I am sure not everyone is going to happy but what can you do, I am sure I will take some heat on it even though I only cast one of twenty-four votes that is just one of the awesome blessings of being a leader. In the end I am glad we did it, after all it will be a great experience for the kids and the last time I checked that is why we are doing this.

Look over the list if you are having some real difficulty understanding why someone was left out, drop me an e-mail. That won’t change anything but maybe it will relieve some tension and it will cause us to look very carefully at the person for Honorable Mention.

Very important – coach if you have an All-American there is a meeting for you and your player Monday evening at the convention center at 10:30PM. All the games will be over by that time. This is a Mandatory meeting if your player wants to play in the All-American Game.

One last note, due to an overwhelming response teams (varsity) will be limited to two players in the 3-point shooting contest.

Coaches' Badges

When you check in at the team desk on Monday at the Convention Center (from 9:00AM-9:00PM), you will receive:

1) A coaches’ notebook with very important information.
2) A nice 2008 Nationals coffee mug (that will be selling at the T-shirt booth for $10).
3) A name badge that will give you access to the coaches’ hospitality suite. The hours for the suite will be 6:00PM to Midnight Mon, Tues, Thurs and Friday. This year the ladies are really stacking up the food every night great food and snacks. Your badge will also give you access to the college coach suite after the showcase on Wednesday evening.

As is our policy, we give one badge per team for the head coach. If one or two of your assistant coaches would like a coaches’ badge they are available for purchase. The price is $15.00 (and yes that includes 2008 Nationals mug). Now here is the best deal, if you register between now and midnight Saturday night your cost will be $10.00 as it makes it so much easier for our staff to handle the making of badges.

To register just send an e-mail to nationals@flattmail.com Subject line - Coaches Badge. Than list coaches name and name of your program. We will only have 200 extra badges to sell so it is first come, first serve.

Head Coaches you don’t need to do anything as we have your information from the team registration form.

Coaches' Meeting

The Coaches Meetings will be at the Clarion Convention Center on Monday March 10th, attendance in one of the two meetings is required.

11:00 AM -- Age Groups 16/18

9:15 PM --Age Groups 10/12/14

Significant Hurdle to Overcome

Yeserday when I returned from Lebanon I turned on my computer to find that my operating system was gone (I guess a hard drive failure). We have treied to recover data but to no avail. I purchased a new laptop and I am moving on. The problem is that I literally had everything on my computer from gym assignments, schedules, coaches note book contents, budget, e-mail records and many more things including maybe the most important my checklist. The biggest problem is we are 6 days out and that is at least 100 hours of work that I am not going to able to duplicate all of it. I am going to try to focus on the most important things. and pray I miss nothing.

What can you do?
1) Pray
2) Be patient if I am slow in responding (and if it isn't really that important ....)
3) I had over 70 e-mails that I didn't answer that I was going to answer when I returend home if you are missing a response just send me the e-mail agian.

Tim Flatt