Key recruiting period for Barnstormers

IOWA CITY - For both college coaches and prep basketball players, this weekend ranks among the most important on the recruiting calendar.

From Friday through Sunday, college basketball coaches are allowed to evaluate prospects at various national events. It's the only opportunity this spring for players to showcase their skills.

'It allows our guys to be seen and be discovered,” said Jamie Johnson, co-director of the AAU Iowa Barnstormers.

The Barnstormers will compete this weekend at the Spring Extravaganza in Minneapolis. Around 48 teams from the Upper Midwest in four different age categories - 14U to 17U - will compete starting Friday night.

Four Barnstormers in the 17-and-under category have drawn significant interest from mid-major programs. Western Dubuque point guard Spencer Haldeman (6-foot-2), Clinton forward Brady Ernst (6-9) and North Scott wing Cortez Seales (6-4) all have heard from Northern Iowa and Drake among other programs. Dubuque Senior forward Luke McDonnell (6-9) already has committed to Northern Iowa.

'These guys at the 17U level, this isn't their first rodeo,” Johnson said. 'They've been through this, most of them the year before. They've been warming up before (Florida Coach) Billy Donovan or (Iowa Coach) Fran McCaffery or whoever is sitting on the baseline watching you play. I'm sure it's still probably a little nerve-wracking to look over and see those guys. But once the game starts, after a minute or two, they settle down and they just play basketball.”

The Barnstormers took a one-year hiatus from hosting their annual Spring Fling event. The group began the tournament a few years ago when the NCAA ended the spring evaluation period. But when the NCAA reopened spring evaluations a year ago, the mid-April Spring Fling failed to attract top regional AAU teams. Most squads saved their funding for the high-profile evaluation tournaments, and the Spring Fling largely became a local event.

Johnson said he'd like to bring it back in late March, when he believes more teams would consider competing in it.

'If it wasn't going to grow, then just kind of table it for a year and see what happens,” Johnson said. 'We could have held it and had nine or 10 teams per division, which would have been fine. But we were hoping it would grow and be something bigger and be more of a regional thing versus a local-type event. We may look to bring it back next year and move it up a little earlier before the evaluation period.”

Johnson said the team will continue to wear #teampat T-shirts at this weekend's tournament to show support for Barnstormers' seventh-grade wing Patrick McCaffery, who is fighting cancer. McCaffery, the son of Iowa's men's basketball coach, had his second surgery last week.

'He's always on our minds,” Johnson said.

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