Hilliard getting some love from 'Nova fans

FROM KEITH GROLLER

My buddy Rick Mondschein, a longtime area teacher and official, is a Villanova alum and cares about all things Wildcats.

He saw this comment on the Villanova.rivals.com website and I thought it was interesting enough to use part of it here. Some nice things are being said about both "Money" and the Stellar tournament.






As you all know, most of the highly recruited players in high school spend more time, and show more loyalty, to their AAU coaches and team. Here in the Lehigh Valley, there is a huge summer high school hoops tournament (the Stellar tournament) which is very well promoted and draws 60 or 70 high school teams from a 100 mile radius of Allentown. To the kids on the local teams, this is hoops heaven---nothing but 3 or 4 days of basketball with several thousands of people watching (much more than will watch them during the season)in a beautiful outdoor setting. The tournament takes over the front pages of the local press and the final day is covered by local TV.

The tourney has had a couple of relatively big names show up to play against the locals (eg--Jimmer Ferdette, Aaric Murray) but for the most part, since July is an open period, 99% of the hot shots choose to travel to the big camps and compete with their AAU squads. For example, Chester has probably entered a team every year for the past 15 years, but they've never had one of their "stars" show up, and they play mostly freshmen, sophomores and upperclassmen that won't see much time during the season.

The exception to the rule has been Hilliard. When he blew up as a soph, the invitations to camps and the offers to travel with his AAU squad started to pile in. Therefore, no one really expected him to show up and play for Liberty High that summer. But of course he did.

And then he confounded everyone when he did the same thing in the summer between his Junior and Senior yr. He played his ass off and said later that he felt it was more important to stay loyal to his school and coaches than it was to play with his AAU squad.

The summer of his senior year, he reluctantly decided that he had be more pragmatic, so he bypassed the Stellar tournament to play with his AAU team in Vegas or some other far flung location. But before doing so, he cleared it with his teammates and coaches, making sure they were on board with the decision. The decision to play out of the area paid off as he caught the eye of our coaching staff and when school opened, Doug West was a regular at his open gyms and his games.

I've been pretty realistic on Hilliard's upside from the get go, confident that he's going to be a real nice four year player for us, nothing more. But watching the segment on him on the Coaches show last week, and then thinking about how he put team ahead of self during high school, It's clear to me that he's the kind of leader that the last couple of Nova teams has lacked, and that gives me a lot of hope for next year and the years after.

http://blogs.mcall.com/groller/