Flood of games engulfs visiting coaches

Steve Carp

Friday, July 16, 1999 | 10:25 a.m.

Tom Abetemarco is trying to build a successful basketball program at Sacramento State. In order to do so, he needs players.

So Abetemarco, once Jim Valvano's assistant at North Carolina State, flies down to Las Vegas, sets up shop at the Crowne Plaza hotel on Paradise Road, makes sure his rental car has plenty of gas as well as a good set of maps and begins his odyssey to make the Hornets competitive in the Big Sky Conference.

He pays his $100 for his tournament packet, makes sure his staff (which has accompanied him here) knows where it's going and the grind begins.

Fourteen hours of nonstop hoops. Every day for five days. He can't see every game. He can't see every kid. By the time he's through, he will know Las Vegas well enough to drive a cab in the event Sac State ever decides to let him go.

The Big Time Tournament, which adidas has put on for the past five years, has gotten so big -- 256 teams -- that it may almost be self-defeating in its purpose -- to provide budding players with exposure to college coaches.

"I'm missing games trying to get everywhere," Abetemarco said at Durango High School. "A game went overtime and I was across town, so I missed part of the next game.

"But I've got to see as many kids as I can. So how can I not be here?"

It's a strange paradox, indeed. When Sonny Vaccaro brought the tournament to Las Vegas five years ago, there were 64 teams and you could pretty much see everyone you wanted to. But the growth of the tournament has exploded to where dozens of teams are turned away by director Larry McKay.

"If we weren't doing something right, we wouldn't be here and we wouldn't be turning 50 teams away," McKay said. "There's always a possibility of kids falling through the cracks and not being seen. But most of these kids are already being recruited and if you're a good player, you're going to be seen."

Most college coaches realize there's just too much basketball. So they've learned to pick their spots. They tend to concentrate on kids from their area, while hoping they might find someone who catches their eye from the other teams.

"It gives us a chance to evaluate them against other players," said former UNLV assistant Jay Wright, now the head coach at Hofstra. "We recruit New York kids and we see them against each other all spring. Here, we get to see them against players from other parts of the country and it gives us a better line on a kid.

"We also get to see kids who may have not played in the spring. So we get to see some fresh faces.

"All in all, it's still worth it. You've got to take the good with the bad. You may miss a kid. But the kid you really want to see, you'll get to see three or four times in two days. That makes it worthwhile."

And sometimes, you get a kid you never expected to get. Pacific's Bob Thomason never dreamed he'd be able to get kids from Indiana and Nebraska to go to college in Stockton, Calif. But by coming to The Big Time every year and watching games, he was able to get a line on players he normally would never have heard of.

UOP got the Abernethy twins, Andy and Matt, to come to California along with three Nebraskans -- Mike Hahn, Dan Masters and Mike Preston.

"If we don't come to Vegas, we never see those kids, much less get a shot at recruiting and signing them," Thomason said. "So it's paid off for us."

When Bob Williams was at UC Davis, he was a regular at The Big Time. For even though the Division II school doesn't offer scholarships, he still recruited the tournament because there are players here who fit at every level.

Now that Williams is at UC Santa Barbara and he is armed with scholarships, he can really try his hand at recruiting here.

"Budget-wise, it's a great bargain," he said. "When I was at Davis, we got a kid from here every year."

But the coaches agree that while there may be too much ground to cover, a staff cannot afford to pass on this tournament.

Even the elite programs, which basically recruit themselves, have their staffs here, if nothing more than to monitor what their early commitments are doing on the court.

Which was why Duke's Mike Krzyzewski and North Carolina's Bill Guthridge were in the stands at Durango Thursday. They may be in great shape recruiting-wise, but it never hurts to watch. Sometimes someone catches your eye and that someone one day winds up in Cameron Indoor Stadium.

But for the Abetemarcos of the college hoop world, it's about trying to outwork the other guy and find some kid no one else knows about or cares much for, but could be the one player who someday turns your program around.

"I think it's impossible to cover it all," Abetemarco said as he headed into the Durango gym. "But you've got to try.

"Hey, it's tough for everyone."