There were a couple of hoops summits that were called by the NCAA and the NBA, including the shoe companies. There were a lot of prominent figures in the game of basketball. Ultimately iHoops was formed as a result of the discussion during those meetings, and I was on the board. Then when Kevin Weiberg left to do work as Chief Operating Officer of the Pac-10, I was kind of drafted to do the job by several of our board members. And how could I say no? When you asked what makes it attractive, anytime you talk about the development of young people – and the mission of iHoops is to establish structure, develop stronger programs overall and enhance young peoples’ athletic experience through the game of basketball – you’ve got to be on board with that.

When you look at pre-collegiate basketball, you know that system has a lot of problems, [including] people complaining about the summer period where they think the travel-team coaches have too much unaccounted power, where recruiting problems occur. You want to be able to help be part of the solution, not part of the problem. iHoops, including our group called First Team, we’re focused on improving the quality of youth basketball. Also, we want the players to understand the importance and value of education – the fact that you can do both. That should allow them to make better and more informed decisions, know what they have to do to be eligible and how to become better players. It’s about valuing the game and how certain life skills can be learned through participation. With all the key stakeholders, whether it’s the players, parents, coaches, even event operators, we want to improve the structure for pre-collegiate hoops.

We have a program that’s going to improve the instruction and fundamentals on how to coach the game. We’re going to have a continuing education program online. We have partnerships with the AAU, with USA Basketball, with the National Federation of State High School Associations. All of those are key stakeholders. They have the influence of legions of coaches and officials. We want to essentially impart these things to them and ultimately experience a tipping point that tips in the favor of health, awareness and safety to our young people that are playing the game.

Is one of iHoops’ goals to lessen the amount of influence AAU plays in basketball recruiting?

Not necessarily lessen. Look, the problem is that AAU gets unfairly tarred with the label that they’re the evil empire. Sure, there are AAU coaches who commit certain transgressions, but there are coaches outside of AAU that create the same kinds of problems. In fact, we are partnered with a number of AAU coaches. Bobby Dodd and Boo Williams have done a tremendous job. We need help in corralling the renegades, if you will. We’re not saying they can’t have influence if they’re the right kind of coach that adheres to the values we’re talking about. But when they have undue influence and take away the influence of the parents, when they do things outside the balance of propriety that tips the scale, then yes, we certainly want to be able to do something about that.

The best way to combat [undue influence] is better education for the parents – what they should be expecting and what they should be doing. And we need to have certification for these coaches. Parents and kids ought to know who the coaches are. … We may have the ability entrusted in us to lay down some best practices.

Nike and Adidas are obviously the two major players on the AAU circuit, but they’re also founding partners of iHoops. How significant is their involvement in iHoops’ mission?

Well, obviously we are a for-profit entity. That model was chosen by both the NBA and the NCAA. So from that, we have to be able to generate revenue. We do that through sponsors interested in our winning program. Nike and adidas are two of the largest partners. Certainly, both of those companies recognize that pre-collegiate basketball is, in many ways, broken. To their credit, they’re trying to help reverse the trend, so to speak. Just being associated with them wields enough bully-pulpit power to be able to start communicating and helping institutional change at events and among the grassroots community. There are programs now that do a lot of skills teaching and skills development. I think going forward we’ll find ways to collaborate in events.

It’s early in your tenure as iHoops CEO, but what are you most proud of thus far?

The thing I’m most proud of is that we’re starting to communicate. If you look on our site, we recently held the 2010 Skills Challenge. One of our biggest goals is to increase youth participation in the game overall. The Skills Challenge, for kids age 9 to 14, boys and girls, had about 100,000 participants. We’re not talking about the elite player. Certainly, the elite players that are influenced are the focal point of some of those solutions, but overall we’re trying to increase participation. We want to get boys and girls involved in playing the game. Our Skills Challenge, which culminated with championship rounds in all 29 NBA markets, was a huge success. We’re hoping next year that with the value of this, we can double the number [of participants].

I’m most proud that we’ve gotten that kind of involvement. We’ve had some visibility and are starting to get that awareness. Going forward, we’ll have our coaches’ education series online. We want to tackle a continuing education program for officials. We’ve got to get those stakeholders standardized so no one will ever have a doubt about whether a coach is equipped to coach grassroots sports or officials are equipped to officiate high school or [pre-collegiate] games.

Some of the other things we want to do is start being more focused on the fundamental development of players. USA Basketball is another partner of ours. We’re working with them, and are involved with them in San Antonio, participating in a conduct clinic. We have members of our First Team group, a mentoring arm that stays in contact with some elite players from the ninth-grade year to senior year. 365 days a year, they’re available. They talk about life issues as well as basketball issues. There’s a conference held annually, this year it’s in Phoenix the week of Aug. 12-15. We gather these kids in the classroom and they learn life skills, communication skills, how to deal with each other. I’m very proud of that. Our guys are recognized through the grassroots community, because those kids understand how important it is to be part of the First Team. More importantly, our guys don’t want anything from that. They’re not a travel-team coach who’s self-interested in their college choice; not a shoe company trying to get them to wear their shoes. So I’m proud of that, certainly, and we may try to expand it to a virtual First Team, where many benefits that the elite players get, overall participation of players in the game of basketball can avail themselves of. Again, we’re just trying to develop better people within the game of basketball.

On another note, the Maryland basketball team is obviously going to look completely different next year without Greivis Vasquez, Eric Hayes and Landon Milbourne. What do you expect from the Terps next season?

Well if you look at past Gary [Williams] teams, they’ve always lost solid players here and there. They’re losing three seniors that really powered the team. Replacing them will be a tremendous burden. But they’ve got some promising guys: [Jordan] Williams, [Sean] Mosley … [Cliff] Tucker. They’ve been in big spots. They’ve hit big shots and done terrific things. They’re just going to get better. Then you look at [the incoming class] and add [Adrian] Bowie in the mix, and I think they can be a very competitive team.

One of the things that people need to do is never count them out. No matter how people perceive them to match up against certain opponents, the Gary teams always find a way to, some may say, overachieve. But I think this year you have a Duke team that has stars coming back from a national championship team. North Carolina is a team that has regrouped. On paper, maybe you say Maryland is going to be in the middle of the pack again. But as I said, you can never count them out. That’s not me saying that as a diehard Maryland guy. That’s me saying that as an analyst who’s seen over the years how Gary teams have competed as well as they have. It’s a tribute to the quality of the student-athletes as well as the coaches.

File photos of Len Elmore from 2007 and 1974.