Australian Football Visits U.S. in Search of Basketball Big MenBy SCOTT CACCIOLA
NEW YORK TIMES
MAY 8, 2015BRADENTON, Fla. — Jalen Carethers, four weeks removed from his final game as a basketball player at Radford, was at a loss. Sports had always come easily to him, but now he was standing in the middle of a multipurpose field at IMG Academy, cradling an oblong ball in his hands and doing his best to figure out how to make this foreign object fly.
“Where on the foot do you want to hit it?” he asked.
Michael Ablett, a national talent manager for the Australian Football League, advised Carethers to snap his leg and make contact with his forefoot. The idea, or at least the hope, was to keep his foot stiff so that he would generate enough force to send the ball end over end on a smooth parabola.
“All right,” Ablett said as he took a few generous steps in the general direction of safety, “let’s have a bit of a go at it.”
A steady rain began to fall. Carethers took a deep breath, squared his 6-foot-7 frame and drop-kicked the ball, which wobbled toward the sky with the ferocity of a bat trapped in an attic. It was, if nothing else, a start.
“Spot on,” Ablett said.
Ablett was one of several officials from the A.F.L. who gathered here late last month for a three-day scouting combine that was unconventional. The prospects on hand? Fifteen college basketball players, most of whom had never even heard of Australian rules football until they were contacted just weeks ahead of the event. But suddenly, and unexpectedly, they were here: tackling and running, blocking and kicking (sort of) as scouts, coaches and executives sought to discover the league’s next great ruckman.
“We don’t produce these types of athletes,” said Nick Byrne, a scout with the North Melbourne Kangaroos. “They don’t exist.”
The combine was a sign of just how far the A.F.L. is willing to go in search of untapped talent, particularly when it comes to identifying prospects who can excel as ruckmen — an important position and one in which it helps to be very tall, very athletic and very tall. (Did we mention tall?)
“I told a couple of my teammates that I was coming out for this, and they were like, ‘Whoa, what?’ ” said Matt Korcheck, a 6-foot-9 senior at Arizona.
Ruckmen vie for the ball after stoppages, typically when it is thrown back into play or when an umpire bounces it high off the turf after goals. Each ruckman attempts to control possession by tapping the ball out to a teammate. Jonathan Givony, a basketball scout and consultant who first organized the annual United States combine in 2012, likened it to a jump ball.
“Except there are 60 to 70 jump balls per game,” said Givony, who makes mental notes of potential targets throughout the college basketball season.
In other words, everything starts with the ruckmen. So size matters, and there is — again, pardon the expression — an apparent shortage of people suitable for the position among the 23 million residents of Australia. Only a handful of players drafted each year measure 6 feet 6 or taller, said Kevin Sheehan, the league’s national and international talent manager.
All 15 athletes at the combine in Florida were at least 6-6, a smorgasbord of verticality. That many of the players had been benchwarmers at basketball programs like Nebraska, Penn State and Florida Atlantic mattered little to those who watched. Korcheck, for example, played sparingly at Arizona last season, averaging 1.2 points a game.
“You can’t expect them to pick up the skills of the game straightaway,” said Mathew Capuano, a development coach for Carlton Football Club and a former ruckman. “What you’re looking for are the little things they might do, and how quickly they’re able to improve.”
As Capuano watched Korcheck and the others work on their passing during the combine’s second day, a camera crew for Australian television arrived to film the event.
“When we did this stuff yesterday, the ball was going all over the place,” Capuano said. “But you can see that they’re actually starting to move it around now.”
It was universally understood that three days provided a narrow window to gauge potential. But there were subtle and not-so-subtle indicators. Korcheck seemed to assert himself as the alpha male whenever he stepped onto the field. And Carethers’s time of 2.79 seconds for the 20-meter dash placed him in the top percentile of prospects who had ever been tested by the league.
After an hourlong psychological assessment, Carethers stopped for a refreshment at a Smoothie King kiosk on IMG Academy’s sprawling campus. He spotted Chris Walker, a former player at Florida who had declared for the N.B.A. draft, as Walker was leaving the gymnasium. They did not really know each other, but they exchanged pleasantries anyway.
“Just basketball etiquette,” Carethers explained.
If any of the combine attendees was resistant to the notion that it was time to let his hoop dreams die, Givony offered perspective. For the hundreds of players who leave college each year, about 150 decent jobs in pro basketball are up for grabs, he said. About 45 of the jobs will go to college players selected in the N.B.A. draft, and another 100 to 120 college players will sign attractive contracts overseas.
“What are the rest of them going to do?” asked Givony, who runs the website DraftExpress.com. “I’m talking about the guys who average 5 points and 5 rebounds, guys who are role players. Those qualities actually translate well to what we’re looking for here: guys who know how to set screens, are physical, can play defense and hustle. We’re not looking for stars.”
James Hunter, a senior who averaged 5.8 points a game at South Dakota last season, was one of two prospects originally from Australia. He recalled his initial email from Givony.
“His first words were something like, ‘You’re going to think I’m crazy but,’ ” Hunter said. “I mean, I’m Australian, and I’d never considered this.”
Australian rules football requires a unique blend of endurance (players can expect to run upward of eight miles each game) and strength (fans are often treated to more than 100 tackles per contest). And while the ruckman’s primary duty is to win those all-important center bounces, he must be deft enough with his hands to pass the ball and speedy enough to run with it, too.
“There is nowhere to hide in this sport,” Givony said.
Those who prove their mettle are well compensated, Sheehan said, with the average A.F.L. salary at 300,000 Australian dollars (about $240,000). Many of the league’s top stars earn more than a million Australian dollars ($800,000), and teams are eager to invest in athletes with great potential. Most contracts are guaranteed for at least two seasons.
And there was tangible proof for Korcheck and the others that these jobs are real. Three former basketball players who were discovered at past combines are under contract with A.F.L. franchises: Eric Wallace, who played at DePaul; Jason Holmes, who played at Morehead State; and Mason Cox, a former walk-on at Oklahoma State who was signed by Collingwood Football Club after an impressive showing last year.
The most recent combine was a mix of instruction and audition, equal parts tutorial and job interview. When Carethers learned that Byrne, the North Melbourne scout, and Cameron Joyce, the list manager for North Melbourne, wanted to meet with him and ask him additional questions, his roommate, Daquan Holiday, became excited.
“Yo!” said Holiday, a senior at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. “Let me get half of that contract! I need new shoes!”
James Johnson, a 6-9 forward who played for Virginia, San Diego State and Liberty during his peripatetic college career, also met with Joyce and Byrne. Their questions ranged from whether Johnson would have reservations about moving to Australia (none at all), to what he considered the most challenging part of the combine (kicking), to whether he had ever gotten into any trouble (accidentally broke some gym equipment in middle school), to how he felt he stacked up to the other players (holding his own).
When Johnson was asked how he would cope with the physical nature of the sport, he said that his habit of getting into foul trouble as a basketball player might serve him well in the A.F.L. He never could have expected that his propensity for hacking opponents could potentially land him a job in Australia.
“From what I’ve seen,” Johnson said, “it’s a game for warriors, and that’s kind of like who I am.”
Later, the entire group reconvened inside a large conference room for a video presentation on “ruckwork” — the finer points of the position. Getting your hands on the ball first. Directing it to a teammate. Chasing ground balls. Tackling and blocking. Joyce showed a clip of a player leaping for a pass. Christian Behrens, a former forward at California, spoke up.
“So, jumping on someone’s back,” he said, “that’s a technique that’s taught?”
The short answer was yes.
The next afternoon, as the combine was wrapping up, the talk among the scouts over lunch was about Korcheck, who had been impressive in a short scrimmage that morning.
“He might have been playing the wrong sport all this time,” said Chris Green, a scout for Richmond Football Club.
“Well,” Givony said, “he might be playing the right one pretty soon.”
Ablett stood to address the players. He thanked them for their effort and for their willingness to try something new. At least two of them, he said, would be invited to Melbourne for a monthlong tryout with the league in the fall. But if teams were to express interest before then, they were free to sign contracts.
As Korcheck headed to his room to pack up, he still seemed to be absorbing it all. He always figured he would find a job in Tucson after graduating this month. But now, who knows?
“I didn’t know what I was doing out there,” he said. “But it felt good.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/sports/ncaabasketball/australian-football-visits-us-in-search-of-basketball-big-men.html?ref=sports&_r=2
