Summer League molds players
Iowa freshman Zach McCabe has grown as a player.
A summer in the Prime Time League has helped mold the 6-5 Sioux City product into a sharpshooter — a perilous threat lurking on the perimeter of the hoop waiting for his chance to strike like a mamba.
Although it would be a stretch, even a flat-out lie to attribute McCabe's skill set entirely to his first year "playing with the big boys" at the North Liberty Community Center, it has certainly accelerated his maturation.
"It helped me a lot," he said. "At the beginning, I was a little nervous. I wasn't really used to the physicality … But during the summer, I got used to it and played a little stronger than I did at the beginning of the season."
In the season-opener June 15 against Etre/Culver's, McCabe scored 12 points with a sub-50 percent shooting percentage. Throughout June, he averaged 15 points for Pelling/Goodfellow.
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"[McCabe was] trying to find a role," Pelling/Goodfellow coach Ray Swetalla said. "The first night he's here, Dain [Swetalla] is a really good player, and Eric May is a really good player … He's an incoming freshman, you know, what do you do? But we ran some stuff for him and found out he can make 3s."
Despite playing alongside some of the more talented players in the league, the freshman forward was able to contribute and increased his scoring average to 22 points per game. He concluded his summer season with a 31-point performance that locked up the league title for Pelling/Goodfellow on Tuesday.
Swetalla said McCabe's experience in the league should help him in his career down the road, although that's not the case for every player.
"There are men here," Swetalla said. "It's a much faster game, although it's summer league, it's not that fast. But you're playing against men … [McCabe] played well and got better. Some of the guys come in, and their teams aren't very good, and all of a sudden everybody's playing one-on-one, and you go, 'This sucks.' "
Aside from nurturing McCabe's play, other incoming freshmen in the summer league displayed promise.
Iowa freshman Melsahn Basabe — who led the league in points and rebounds — regularly gave Hawkeye fans reason to get excited about the future season.
Randy Larson, the Prime Time commissioner, said players competing in the league must exercise discipline to compete.
"It isn't going to be a pickup game," he said. "The ball is going to get thrown into somebody, it's going to go down to the other end of the floor, and you're going to move it around a little bit …Everyone's going to play on defense. Everyone's going to talk about screens.
"[It's] a stage to either prove that you can play the right way and have the ability to do it or that you don't understand how to play."
For 24 years, the Prime Time league has served as a proving grounds, of sorts, for the state's young basketball talent to test their ability against stronger, more seasoned veterans.
Larson — who also coaches in the league — plans to continue to provide the opportunity for players to compete during the off-season.
"I remember saying that first year [of Prime Time league] that they'd probably have to drag me off the floor with a cane in my hand because I love doing it," he said. "I feel that way … still. When I would stop would be when we can't find a majority of the players who want to play … old school basketball. If it gets to be where everybody wants to be Kobe Bryant, then I'll hang it up."
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