Four days of the all-important testing remained. Still to come were exams in math and chemistry. Yet, virtually every top player in New York was spending the weekend playing ball in a meaningless summer basketball tournament. Where others saw prospects, Mangan saw suspects. There's no accountability here.
Players pay the price.
Some of them will never play college ball. This is as close as they'll ever get. Some of the most egregious abuses in summer basketball occur at the boundary between athletics and academics. Spring and fall tournaments, held on weekends and often out of town, force players to miss SAT prep classes and, sometimes, the SAT itself. Summer coaches are reluctant to pull their teams out of tournaments when academic conflicts arise for fear their players will join other teams that are playing in those events.