There’s no GPS for Minnesota’s basketball geography

So many videos and not enough hours in the day. That has been the challenge over the past two months since we entered this topsy-turvy COVID-19 era when all things normal seemed to come to a screeching halt. Since the state tournament was scuttled on the morning of Friday, March 13th (how ominous is that?!), we have spent way too much time thinking about previously abstract concepts – things like social distancing, flattening the curve and whether or not to wear a mask in public even if you aren’t robbing a bank. There has been almost zero gym time. Thank goodness for video!

Nearly 200 films have come our way since March as players have done a great job of putting together season highlights and getting them out on social media. For us at Prep Girls Hoops this very quickly became a way to evaluate players, offer descriptions of their games and hand the videos over to you for review. It has worked remarkably well. So far we have profiled 115 players in this way with at least 30 or 40 more to come.

College coaches are watching, and we are having tons of conversations with them on a regular basis. This has led to opportunities for more Minnesota players to be seen, recruited and offered. The challenge has been how to sort the videos into logical categories. We have done that in a number of ways – by class and position, by status as fresh faces or top performers and, most recently, by geography.

Dividing players geographically is always a challenge. Over the past couple of months some states in the Prep Hoops network have begun offering evaluations and rankings by city or region. That would be a lot easier if we all lived in a state like Ohio, for example, where there are three major cities (Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus) and other pretty sizable markets (Dayton, Akron and Toledo), as well. That’s obviously not the case in Minnesota, where the Twin Cities region contains some 60 percent of the state’s population.

Although there are regional centers like Rochester, Mankato, St. Cloud, Moorhead and Duluth, the division of talent does not align well with the geography. Why? Because the pool of prospects is even more skewed than the population. The vast majority of the players with college potential live in the seven-county Twin Cities metropolitan region. While there are obviously great players everywhere in the state the pool doesn’t run very deep.

WELCOME TO GEOGRAPHY CLASS

In thinking about how to split Minnesota up we have decided to compromise in the most logical way we could come up with and create five regions: Twin Cities East, Twin Cities West, Southeast Minnesota, Southwest Minnesota and Greater Minnesota. This led to some important decisions and some potentially controversial lines. So be it. We never shy away from a good debate over talented prospects.

Although the 7-county region is widely used to define the Twin Cities metropolitan area, we’ll narrow it down a little bit more than that and make a few arbitrary choices. The most obvious of these decisions is in the Northwest Metro where there are some schools that fall outside of the county lines but are clearly “metro schools” in every sense of the word. We’re talking about you St. Michael-Albertville and Elk River. Here’s what the regions will look like:

Twin Cities East

Through the heart of Minneapolis-St. Paul the primary dividing line will be the Mississippi River. In the suburbs we’ll use Interstate 35 to the South and Interstate 35W to the North. That puts schools like Centennial, Burnsville and Bloomington Kennedy in the East while Bloomington Jefferson, Blaine and St. Anthony Village are in the West. The Northern boundary will be the county lines, meaning Forest Lake is the most-Northerly school in the region. The Southern edge will be on a line from Lakeville South through Farmington over to Hastings.

Twin Cities West

It gets a little tricky trying to figure out where the Twin Cities West ends and Greater Minnesota begins. Since we have to draw the line somewhere we will use the western edge of Hennepin and Anoka counties as the split for the most part. We’ll put schools like Rockford, Buffalo, Delano, and Big Lake in Greater Minnesota while Waconia will be part of Twin Cities West. In the South the dividing line is between Jordan and Belle Plaine.

Southeast Minnesota

The boundaries of this region are pretty obvious: Interstate 35 on the West, the Iowa border to the South, the Mississippi River to the East, and a line that stretches roughly from Northfield through Canon Falls to Red Wing on the North. That puts Austin and Owatonna in the Southeast region and Albert Lea and Waseca in the Southwest. The primary AAU club in the Southeast is the Southern Minnesota Fury, although many of the athletes play on Metro-based AAU teams.

Southwest Minnesota

The tricky part here is where to put the Northern boundary of the Southwest region and we have decided to make it U.S. Highway 12. That means Willmar and Benson are in the Southwest and New London-Spicer and Morris Area are not. The primary AAU clubs in this region include Minnesota Rise, Minnesota Nice and West Central Wildcats, although Nice also draws a lot of kids from the Southeast.

Greater Minnesota

Everything else. Anchor AAU clubs include the Minnesota Comets out of St. Cloud, West Central United in Alexandria along with Northern Lights, High Impact and the Starks Academy up North. A number of Northern kids also play for the Wisconsin Playmakers. Many kids on the Western edge of the state play across the North Dakota-Minnesota state line for ND Pro and FM Fierce.

WHY DEFINE BASKETBALL REGIONS?

The geographic breakdown over the past three or four classes is pretty clear: About 10% of the ranked prospects have come from Southeast Minnesota, 10% from the Southwest and 15% from Greater Minnesota. Twin Cities East has produced approximately 22% of the college players while Twin Cities West is at about 43% and growing fast.

Why define the state in terms of geographic regions? The answer is simple: to give more exposure to more athletes, and that is always our goal. This approach will enable us to compile lists such as ‘Top 10 Guards in the Southwest Region’ or ‘Best 2022 Bigs in Greater Minnesota.’ While there is a ton of talent in the Twin Cities, we feel it is just as important to feature players like Jenna Anderson Jenna Anderson 6'3" | C Royalton | 2020 State MN (Royalton),  Kora Forsline Kora Forsline 6'1" | SF Mesabi East | 2022 State MN (Mesabi East) and Sadie Voss Sadie Voss 5'9" | CG Jackson County Central | 2022 State MN (Jackson County Central) as it is to write about Callin Hake Callin Hake 5'8" | PG Chanhassen | 2022 State #64 Nation MN (Chanhassen), Amber Scalia Amber Scalia 5'9" | CG Stillwater | 2022 State MN (Stillwater) and Chyna Young Chyna Young 5'7" | SG Apple Valley | 2021 State MN (Apple Valley).

Tomorrow we will continue with the video evaluations using our new geographic regions for the first time as we look at 2022 stock risers from Southeast Minnesota.