ICYMI: The Prep Girls Hoops Top 250 is coming to your state!
In case you missed it, Prep Girls Hoops Top 250 Expos are back in 2022!
At Prep Girls Hoops, it is our mission to bring visibility to ALL prospects! Whether an athlete projects to play at the Division I, Division II, Division III, NAIA, or Junior College level, our scouts are there to recognize their performances year-round.
Entering our 4th year of running the The Top 250 Expo series, we are excited to continue to push this goal further with more events in more states than ever before!
The Top 250 Expo is the perfect pre-high school season opportunity for prospects to put their skills on display to Prep Girls Hoops scouts & staff as well as a vast array of college coaches through live game play. All games will be live streamed via BallerTV and extensive written analysis will be posted on PrepGirlsHoops.com for our hundreds of college-coach subscribers. We will also provide live coverage of the event on social media along with highlighting top performers throughout the day for an even greater breadth of exposure for the prospects. Additionally, Top 250 attendees will have the option to receive exclusive Prep Girls Hoops apparel.
Simply put, you will not find a more polished and comprehensive showcase experience than the Prep Girls Hoops Top 250 Expo.
Why the Top 250 Expo?
There are multiple reasons why the Top 250 expo is widely embraced each Fall. “It’s an opportunity for players to sign up on their own accord and gain individual visibility, both with media coverage and with college programs,” said Nick Carroll, co-founder of Prep Network, which operates the Prep Girls Hoops websites. “During the high school season players don’t have control over the schedule. Whatever size high school you go to, whatever geography you live in, whatever your team decides, that’s who you are going to play in front of within the context of the team. The Top 250 Expo is an opportunity for players to represent themselves.”
“Obviously you want to come and play the right way, but the idea is that you can come and represent the name on the back of the jersey for a day and not the name on the front,” Carroll added.
The Top 250 Expos offer large amounts of exposure to players with the potential to play at any level of collegiate basketball. The company’s mission has always been to ensure that all potential collegiate players receive notice, not just those that are headed to high-profile Division 1 programs. That doesn’t mean the D1-bound athletes won’t benefit from participating. They have and they will.
“You see a lot of showcases that are by invitation only, where it is very clearly geared to the top few players in a state,” said Jake Phillips, who co-founded Prep Network with Carroll in 2012. “We want to provide coverage to as many kids as possible and anyone who wants to attend can come. We have had really cool stories where players have had some nice opportunities as a result of participating. These kids weren’t really on the radar before and they got college paid for as a result of being at a Top 250.”
Giving coaches and players what they want
One of the questions we always hear from players and parents is about the format. The answer is simple: the kids are going to play basketball. When the Expos were first held there were multiple elements – dynamic testing, skills work and the like. That’s what you see at a lot of showcases, but it’s not what college coaches are really looking for.
“In the past we were getting a lot of coaches contacting us in advance wanting to know when the games were starting. College coaches want to see the players get up and down the court and that’s what we give them,” Carroll said, explaining the reasoning behind the games-only format. “We are focused on having great coaches working with the players, a really high-energy environment, and balanced rosters so that the players can come in and have a great experience and the college coaches can get what they want, too.”
Because the Top 250 Expos will not be held during a so-called NCAA ‘live period’ the Division 1 coaches are not allowed to attend. That won’t stop them from being informed about player performances in great depth. There will be extensive coverage and assessment of individual players by Prep Girls Hoops evaluators and scouts. With D1 viewing days now so limited this kind of media coverage is more important than ever. Prep Girls Hoops has more than 400 colleges that subscribe and our writers are in constant conversation with coaches about players.
“The D1 coaches may not be sitting there at our event but with the number of college coaches that we now have on our platform and taking in our content every day you have an opportunity to gain visibility with those schools during a time frame when they are not allowed to be out there evaluating players,” Carroll said. “For all of the D2, D3, and NAIA kids obviously they have the ability to play in front of those schools at the event which is great, too.”
There are no restrictions on D3, NAIA, and JUCO coaches and there will be plenty on hand. The event is attractive to them because, unlike AAU events, there is no charge for attendance or information. The company’s goal has always been to maximize exposure for players, not make money off coaches or spectators, who are also admitted at no charge. “All coaches have to do is RSVP in advance,” Carroll said, “and they get the college packet for all of the athletes including academic and contact information.”
If you are a player looking to boost your stock, compete against some of the best players in your state, and get quality live game reps before the high school season, this is a can’t-miss opportunity!