Team Breakdown Wins 2007 AAU National Basketball Championship
August 1st, 2007 Posted in AAU Basketball
Photo: Team Breakdown
Links:
Join the AAU basketball group website
Instantly start a free multimedia profile website or team site
Update: Team Breakdown’s Kenny Boynton joins teammates Ray Taylor and Eloy Vargas at Heritage
Team Breakdown became the first Florida team to ever win a 17U AAU National Basketball Championship, beating Ohio’s King of the Court 74-45 at the Milk House (Wide World of Sports, Disney). In Ron White’s words during his live blog, “What is it about Ohio and Florida? They’ve decided the championships in AAU ball, two NCAA sports (Florida Gators football and basketball over Ohio State Buckeyes) and the last two presidential election.”
Ron’s live blog of the AAU championship game and post-game interviews and article is over at the Florida Sports blog, and our complete coverage is over here at the AAU basketball group site.
We were live at the tournament and saw a bit of everything. The headlines of course - from top college coaches like Coach K, Tom Izzo, Tubby Smith, and Billy Donovan scouting many of the games to buzzer beating game winners from players like Marcus Jordan (yes, Michael Jordan’s son…see Illinois team video highlights link on the AAU page listed above). However, our feeling was this tournament was about all the participants that make amateur sports so special, and that was echoed in the innumerable conversations we had with coaches, players, and refs. The last player off the bench diving after loose balls with a minute to go and his team down 20; the coaches that in many cases are putting in long hours with these teams almost year round; the parents infinite support; the refs that can almost never win and are almost always underrated; the staff (AAU and Disney) managing the logistics of hundreds of teams from all over the country playing at different venues spread out across the greater Orlando area.
In the end, Florida’s Team Breakdown fittingly took home the championship - they were on a different level almost from start to finish, but it was quite an event for everyone that participated.
[Where: 32801]
