This weekend is the annual Tulip Tip Off in Holland, the tournament I believe is the best in the state. I’m probably not alone in my asssessment of the tournament, and I ‘m sure running concurrently with the nationally-renowned Tulip Festival doesn’t hurt.
It’s a great basketball weekend — you should check it out.
I’ve been to the mountaintop and the valley deep on the AAU circuit. I’ve been to a lot of very well run tournaments over the last four years and, I must say, I’ve been to equally as many horrible ones.
At the Tulip Tip Off, games tends to start on time, officiating tends to be pretty reliable, and teams appear to be less inclined to cheat. Heck, even on their schedules they make one thing clear: U-17 basketball is for seniors-to-be, not 19 and 20 year olds who aren’t even in school. This rule is consistently broken by coaches across the state.
I will glady spend a little more money to send teams to well-run tournaments if it means not having them play through a complete debacle like they did last weekend at River Rouge. Luckily, our next two tournaments (Tulip and Camp Darryl) are both top-notch.
There will be 54 teams in Holland this weekend, a tournament record.