Most Sturt Div 1 nad 2 Boys and Girls are going. 14 Sturt Boys will be strong and Forestville and Sturt will be strong in Girls

The Vic Teams that will be good are Knox, Melb and Nunnawading. No one else really has shown much so far

As for the SA and Vic Teams for the rest of the divisions, who are the stand outs ? These are the Vic teams I suggest will be hard to beat

Boys

U/12's Melb, Bulleen

U/14's Knox, Dandy and Melb

U/16's Werribee, Knox, Keilor and Melb

U/18's Dandy, Waverley Ballarat

Girls

U/12's Eltham, Knox

U/14's Dandenong, Bulleen and Melb

U/16's Dandenong, Melb and Knox

U/18's Nunnawading, Dandenong

Doncaster And Diamond Valley ?

Under 14 Boys - Geelong will be tough. Melbourne look the goods. They are very strong with excellent gaurds and a number of 6ft plus big kids! Melb 2 have also qualified for Vic Champs and they have a 6.2ft kid and 4 of the players from their championship classic team from under 12s. Knox will and Diamond Valley will also be up there. If under 12s is anything to go by SA teams will struggle against the top Vic teams!

Nobody will touch Melbourne in the 14s. They have recruited very strongly in the past few months. Bordering on ruining the competition, but as always, the gap will close as the season goes on.

Geelong will be extremely good, are returning about 3 or 4 bottom age players from Clubs this year. I do agree that nobody will get near Melbourne in the next few months. Probably one of the strongest teams assembled in U14s for a number of years. Bit of a shame seeing as it was a strong age group and very even across the competition in U12's, and now all the talent has flooded into one team. Purely coincidental!

What is probably helping the competition though, is that all the good coaches seem to be at the other strong clubs. Knox, Dandenong, DV, Blackburn are all extremely well coached, and as said above, the competition always closes the gap.

Agreed, I know Knox and Dandenong have good coaches there but who is at Blackburn and DV ?

Guy that has DV is the same guy that had their 16s last year. Has been around a while. Has done some state stuff in the past too. Dont know his name.

Not sure on who has Blackburn.

Not hearing much about the boys from SA this year. They had some bad luck in the 16 Nationals dropping to Vic by a basket but have some really good talent, has the agre group for this next years Nationals been depleted by kids going to Footy ?

Also does anyone know much about Nunawading and Wverley 16's and 18's ? Who is coaching them have they improved at all after pretty good years in the past 12 months

Thanks for info

Or their Telephone bill is huge

Telephone bill???? Lucky kids to have 3 experienced coaches. Most teams struggle to find one. Good clubs chase good coaches and this is what will develop good kids and good teams!

Sturt are normally there

No need for a telephone bill, they just waited until the Vic Primary school trials were on at MSAC and did their work then. It's ok though, what goes around comes around.

My club are getting regular fixture changes every day, so probably waiting to have them finalized before posting them.

Werribee 16 boys are going to be the big challange this year, Won VC last year with 4 top age, 3 of them doing the Vic squad training. The coach is very good, be on the Australian Youth team coaching staff

I saw Melb 1 14 boys last night - they look good. Apparently two new kids (not the best in the team either) but all the rest from last years teams. Sounds like there are some sour grapes between Vic teams!!!

14 boys - sturt have made eliminaton final. only loss in their group was to Melbourne by 40 odd points!
Think they will play Sydney team Hills Hornets - they have a good chance to win and perhaps cross over with Diamond Valley in Semis!

Alright it's over now so let's hear it - results, surprises, thoughts?

Bulleen won 12 boys as you would expect. Group of kids was just really hard at it and smart with great skills. Eltham got closer than I thought and should be pretty happy with how they ended up for the weekend.

Saw both the U14 boys semi finals - Melbourne destroyed Blackburn in one, and DV got home in a close one over Hills. Blackburn were just too small for Melbourne who are big everywhere. Hills will be pretty good come Nationals should they qualify. Very big team, and run some plays too. DV had a red hot shot at Melbourne in the final, but a few crucial moments went Melbournes way and they won comfortably.

As an aside, there was talk earlier in the post about who was coaching DV. The DV coach (Rob from memory) is a great guy, spoke with him after his game, and he was happy to talk with me about all things hoops. Liked the way he coached his team too, very upbeat and positive all the way through. Clearly doesn't have the strongest team, but is a great coach.

DV won the 16 boys in a great game against Knox - shame it was played on court 2 preventing people from watching comfortably. DV look like a very good team.

Keilor won the 18 boys in a tight one over Waverley. Don't think Waverley had their full team though. Wasn't a bad game, but pretty scrappy.

Dandy beat Kilsyth in the 20s in a physical matchup. Was a good game to watch, really exciting.

Enjoyed that it wasn't ludicrously hot for the tournament this year, and the games on Thursday night helped too. Bring on the next one!

I saw the finals of 14s too.

I agree re the Diamond Valley coach. He was very positive with his team and rotated all of his players well. Could have easily caused an upset. Come the end of the year they will be a force to reckon with. Geelong will also test both teams

Melboure are big and in the semi final looked awesome. Their kids can all play. Not a week kid amongst the 10 there which is seldom seen! In the the final they tended to go a bit more individual and rely on a couple of players rather than their entire team.

Looking at their roster they will be unstoppable if the coaches can get the team work going and the best from all their players!

My kids love going to tournaments. It gives them time to be with their mates and it is great for parents as well.

Ask anyone who has played juniors and their most memorable moments will be the tournaments (and most wont even remember the games, just the fun they had).

Having fun as kids will always be an important component of junior development. Good on you Sturt for pushing this aspect of the game!

The DV 16s were very good in the games that I saw, in particular their wins over Werribee, Melbourne and Knox. Very talented group of kids with scorers everywhere. Will be very good all year. Seems to be some very good things going on at DV with their teams all looking good.

Waverley were undermanned in the 18s, and missing some pretty key players. Will be very hard to stop when it gets down to the end of the season, and even Queens birthday weekend.

i think that the under 14 melb tigers girls look like a strong team