Columnist Steve Carp: Big Time closes the loopholes

IT NEVER FAILS. You've got something good going and wham! Someone tries to circumvent the system and tries to get over.

The 4th annual Big Time basketball tournament is history. A record 224 teams spent the last week in town hooping it up in front of more than 400 college coaches and NBA scouts. As always, there were some talented youngsters on display, kids we'll one day see in the pros, assuming the NBA players and owners settle their financial and social differences.

Other than a shattered backboard and the champion Michigan Mustangs showing up fashionably late for their last dance with the Team Carolina Sonics at Durango High Monday, it was hard for the fans to find much fault in the summer hoopfest.

But look below the surface and you see some disturbing undercurrents.

It seems some players need more than four years to complete their high school educations. To them and their summer league coaches, that includes their basketball ABCs.

A dangerous trend which began as a couple of isolated cases a year ago has manifested itself over the past week. Players who had either graduated from high school or were planning to use a fifth year by going to a prep school were participating in a tournament that is geared for high school players.

And it wasn't just a player here or a player there. Teams had as many as three elder scholastic statesmen, though I am playing footloose with the word "scholastic."

In one case, a player who was out of high school for two years, Anthony Grundy of Pump 'N' Run III, was allowed to play. You might call Grundy a super-duper senior.

I call it a farce. When a 19-year-old can play against a 16-year-old, that's wrong.

The other disturbing trend is this notion of one player playing for more than one team. It was bad enough a couple of years ago when you had the Las Vegas Invitational going head to head with The Big Time and you had players trying to play in both tourneys.

Now you've got players like Cheyenne's Demetrius Hunter playing for a team from Utah, then joining a Las Vegas outfit once his Utah squad was eliminated.

And he wasn't alone. Doug Wrenn was listed on the roster for EBO Fresno and the Long Island Panthers. What if Fresno and the Panthers had played each other, what would Wrenn do? Play a half for each side?

But because there were no rules preventing this sort of thing, it was all legal. Not ethical, mind you, but permissible.

Fortunately, Sonny Vaccaro and Larry McKay, the guys who run The Big Time, saw what was going on and did something about it.

From now on, you have to be no older than a senior-to-be to be eligible to play. No more fifth-year prep school stuff. And there will be no more multiple spots on rosters. It's one team per player.

"We saw people were trying to take advantage of the rules," McKay said. "So we're changing the rules."

Good for them. And shame on the coaches and players who are trying to ruin a great tournament to satisfy their own selfish means.

Then you wonder why summer basketball gets the reputation it has.

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