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The flaws of McDonald's All-American game nomination process

14, Jan 2015

The flaws of McDonald's All-American game nomination process

The nominees for the 2015 McDonald's All-American game were released on Wednesday and hundreds of players across the country were honored by the committee. That's a terrific accomplishment for a hard-earned high school career.

Celebrate this moment.

In fact, there are 21 boys players from Georgia that earned a nomination. But the list is filled with asterisks.

Here is the list:

See anything wrong with that list? I do. There are six players (that's 28.5 percent of the list) that are not attending the schools listed on the McDonald's All-American nominations:

Ahmad Caver - North Gwinnett*
Shawntrez Davis - Tri-Cities**
Dakota Holtzclaw - Horizon Christian***
Tobias Howard - North Gwinnett****
Kejuan Johnson - Wheeler*****
Dante Scott - Campbell******

*Caver graduated from North Gwinnett in 2014 and is now a post-grad student at St. John's Military in Wisconsin.
**Davis is at a prep school in LaGrange, Georgia called Sound Doctrine.
***Holtzclaw is a current senior at North Forsyth.
****Howard is at IMG Academy in Florida.
*****Johnson hasn't attended Wheeler since 2012. He went to Westlake and then Hapeville Charter. Johnson is currently at Hargrave Military in Virginia.
******Scott left Campbell after his sophomore year and is now at IMG Academy the second straight year.

According to a 2015 press release, "Players were nominated by high school coaches, athletic directors, principals and members of the McDonald's All-American Games Selection Committee."

If that's the case, then we have some coaches, athletic directors and principals that are out of loop. But, that's probably not the case. They know who they coach, who they serve and who they lead at their respective schools.  

So, McDonald's All-American Games Selection Committee, what say you? How do you nominate these players from these schools? Who does the Georgia selections? How does this process get so screwed up?

Is there no follow-up? Did the selection committee member pull up a recruiting website, cut and paste names from Georgia and submit as his/her list? The McDonald's All-American game is the pinnacle all-star game for the nation's best players. So, why isn't the process treated with more respect and attention to detail?

Yes, there are players on the list that are deserving. Truthfully, only one player from the Peach State that will be voted into the game and that's Jaylen Brown of Wheeler. He deserves it. Malik Beasley of St. Francis would be on my ballot for the 24-player game held in Chicago on April 1, 2015 at the United Center in Chicago.

Derek Ogbeide of Pebblebrook is not listed. The general basketball population will likely agree that the aggressive center from Cobb County is one of the top 8 players in the state of Georgia.

I don't want to take away from the prestige of being nominated. I just take issue with the lazy process that went into it. The game is better than this and the kids deserve better than what the current situation is.


Justin Young
Editor-in-Chief

Justin Young has been the editor-in-chief of HoopSeen.com since 2013. He manages the day-to-day operations on the site and in conjunction with our national and regional events. He was the national basketball editor for Rivals.com and a contributing editor at Yahoo! Sports. Young has been earned numerous awards for his work in sports journalism, including the Georgia Press Association Columnist of the Year. His Justin Young Basketball recruiting service has been in existence since 2002 and worked with over 300 schools from all levels. He is the director of HoopSeen Elite Preview camps and our national Preview camp series. 

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