1999-2000 McDONALD'S ALL AMERICAN TEAM

                   Being named to the The McDonald's All American High School Basketball Team is the highest honor a high school basketball player can receive, but unfortunately politics is part of the process and sometimes players who deserve to be on the team don't make it and vice versa.  And this is often the subject of great controversy, because being named to the McDonald's Team is such a coveted and prestigious honor.  Fortunately, there were no glaring omissions this year, as the top 15 ranked players in the nation, according to the HOOP SCOOP, all made the team.  And so did two others who rank among our top 20 nationally (see below list for our national ranking of players selected to the McDonald's Team).    Rounding out the 20 players selected via the selection process, whereby, three different ballots were sent out to 36 selection committee members, including myself, Clark Francis, Editor and Publisher of the HOOP SCOOP, were 6'8 Travon Bryant from Long Beach (Jordan) CA, 7'6 Neil Fingleton from Worcester (Holy Name) MA, and 6'3 Scooter Sherrill from Mt. Ulla (West Rowan) NC.  "The first 20 players were selected as those that received the highest number of votes by the ballot," says Bob Geoghan, who is the executive director of the McDonald's All American Game.  "As in the past Coach Morgan Wootten, Chairman of the Selection Committee, made the decision to add four additional players to round out the East versus West teams."
                    And that's where the problems and the politics come in, as the final four players to make the team were 6'8 Scott Hazelton from Lawrence (Central Catholic) MA, 6'8 Garner Meads from Salt Lake City (Brighton) UT, 6'1 Luke Ridnour from Blaine (H.S.) WA, and 6'9 Brian Boddicker from Duncanville (H.S.) TX.    Hazelton, who has been sidelined with an injury, and, as a result, probably won't play much anyway, is a good political pick, because he's from Massachusetts and having a local player or two certainly is good for ticket sales.  Remember, the game will be played on Wednesday, March 29th, at the FleetCenter in Boston, MA on ESPN at 8:00 PM EST.  However, we find the fact that Meads, Ridnour, and Boddicker all made the team very troubling, because none of these three players made the final ballot of 32, which did include 6'7 Nick Anderson from Baton Rouge (Southern Lab) LA, 6'2 Adam Boone from Minnetonka (H.S.) MN, 6'9 Abdou Diame from Mouth of Wilson (Oak Hill) VA, 6'1 Cliff Hawkins from Mouth of Wilson (Oak Hill) VA, 6'4 A.J. Moye from Atlanta (Westlake) GA, 6'6 Rickey Paulding from Detroit (Renaissance) MI, 6'8 Justin Reed from Jackson (Provine) MS, 6'11 Jared Reiner from Tripp (Tripp-Belmont) SD, 6'2 Imari Sawyer from Chicago (Martin Luther King) IL, 6'6 Marcus Toney-El from West Orange (Seton Hall Prep) NJ, and 6'6 Luke Whitehead from Mouth of Wilson (Oak Hill) VA, as well as the 21 players who made the game (Austin, Barrett, Taliek Brown, Andre Brown, Bryant, Cook, Duhon, Fingleton, Ford, Griffin, Harper, Hazelton, Howell, Jeffries, Miles, Randolph, Rice, Sherrill, Stevenson, Taylor, and Wallace).
                        While the members of the McDonald's All-American advisory and selection committee provides legitimacy to the process of selecting the top players in the nation to the team, it is a shame that in the end politics and selling tickets jades the process.  That's right!   Meads, Ridnour, and Boddicker are on the team for another reason - attendance.  All three are white and apparently it is more important to draw some extra fans than it is too take the best players regardless of whether they are black or white.  And if you have a quota to fill, at least pick the best players.  Meads is ranked #25 nationally by the HOOP SCOOP, so he's a legitimate pick.   However, we have to ask how Ridnour and Boddicker made it over 6'2 Brian Morrison from Kirkland (Lake Washington) WA and 6'1 Jake Sullivan from Oakdale (Tartan) MN?
                        Unfortunately the answer is very simple.  What one does during their senior year of high school and even the summer before one's senior year makes little or no difference in whether they make the McDonald's All American Team.  It's all about who has the been hyped the longest.  I really liked Ridnour when I saw him the summer before his sophomore and junior seasons, but nobody outside of the Pacific Northwest has seen him at fill strength in the last year and a half.  And anybody who did see him last summer would have been more than disappointed.  While he deserves an A+ for guts and playing while injured, he was nothing short of aweful at NIKE last summer. 
                    So, while nobody really knows if Ridnour is good enough to be on the McDonald's Team, I very seriously doubt that he's better than the point guards he had to beat out - Duhon, Taylor, Barrett, Cook, Brown, and Sawyer, who was one of the 20 players I voted for on my final McDonald's ballot (see box below that includes the 20 players we voted for on our final ballot), but was not named to the team.  To prove my point even further, Boddicker had been ranked as high as top 20 nationally by Bob Gibbons in All-Star Sports before last summer, but he had a terrible summer due to injuries, which apparently led to frustration and a lack of desire, which is why we dropped him completely out of our top 100 nationally.
                        While Ridnour was on the disabled list most of the summer and Boddicker was stinking it up, apparently it didn't matter how well Morrison, who ranks #32 nationally by the HOOP SCOOP and is signed with North Carolina, and Sullivan, who ranks #28 nationally by the HOOP SCOOP and is signed with Iowa State, played.  The same holds true with 6'2 Cedric Banks from Chicago (Westinghouse) IL, who ranks #16 nationally by the HOOP SCOOP, but who didn't even make the second ballot of 41 players, much less the final ballot of  32 players.  But Banks, who is a phenomenal athlete and winner in the true sense of the word on the court, led his AAU team to national championship last summer in the 17-Under National Tournament in Orlando, FL and a top five ranking in the USA Today poll all winter.  As a matter of fact, he was the big reason why Westinghouse upset then #1 ranked Mouth of Wilson (Oak Hill) VA at the KMOX Shootout in St. Louis, MO in early December.
                        While I don't want to get into a big argument over who should or shouldn't have made the team regarding players who are in the 20-50 range nationally, I do want to point out that Boddicker, Sherrill, and Fingleton aren't even ranked among our top 100.  Everybody tells me how much better Fingleton has gotten since we saw him last at the adidas ABCD Camp in the summer, but I also hear that he's good for 7'6, but not 7'0.  As a result, we will watch the McDonald's Game, as well the NIKE Hoop Summit in Indianapolis, IN, which he's also scheduled to play in, with an open mind.  However, while potential is nice, you'd better be a pretty good right now if you want to be ranked among my top 25.  So two or four points and the same amount of rebounds by Fingleton in both games will probably not be enough to change my mind.   Sherrill has to be better than I think he is, but he is one of the guys who never seems to play well when I'm around.  Hopefully, he will redeem himself in my estimation in the McDonald's Game and, as a result, move up dramatically.   And maybe Boddicker will get a little pissed off and show he has some heart, which obviously was lacking last summer.  In other words, nothing is etched in stone.
                         And finally, hopefully Bob Geoghan and the people involved with the McDonald's the selection process will take our criticisms with the spirit they were intended.   "While we have been criticized publicly for our system of choosing the players by some people, I welcome your constructive criticism and suggestions on how to improve the selection process," said Geoghan in the press release we received in the mail today.  "We will continue to use every method possible to ensure the integrity and fairness of the process and to keep the McDonald's All American High School Basketball Game recognized as the premier high school event in the country ."   In the past Geoghan has always been true to his word by taking steps each year to improve the selection process.  While we have identified a serious problem in the process, solving the problem may be much more difficult.  We wish Geoghan luck, because I probably already can name 15 of the 20 players who will make the team next year.   And as a result, the guy who emerges next summer will be at a huge disadvantage.   If don't believe it, just ask Banks, Sullivan, Morrison, at al. who played great last summer and this winter, but never had a legitimate shot at making the team.   

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