What to expect from the 2022/23 AceBoy Sports Group Reapers...

What’s up everyone!

I hope you’ve all enjoyed your week and looking forward to a fun weekend, I for one definitely am! To everyone who read my last post thank you so much and I hope you enjoyed it. To those who haven’t yet subscribed and are new here, you can subscribe below!

For those of you who don’t know (given the lack of marketing on the subject I wouldn’t be surprised) the Draft for the 2022/23 BBA League was scheduled to take place this week (we shall see if it does. I will be sharing our roster for the upcoming season, but before that I wanted to give a little breakdown of what we are hoping to accomplish as a team regardless of the players we draft.

So let’s get tucked in!

Increased social media presence

Being the only team to livestream games last season, we will continue that trend going into the 2022/23 season. In addition to livestreaming, we will make an effort to get more sound bites from the players before, during, and after games for more of a holistic fan experience for those following digitally. We plan to be more active with our Instagram story and Reel posts, and will make more of a commitment to building out our TikTok page, which we seldom used last season.

While we had a decent social media presence during last season, we definitely could’ve done a lot better with what we had. We plan on being one of the more, if not the most, exciting team this season and we need to capitalize on what that could mean for our online presence. You can expect to see a lot more highlights, Reels, and TikToks from us this year, and if you don’t already you can follow our basketball, @hoops.absg on Instagram.

Unfortunately the BBA has elected to make this league a draft league, so the identity we built on social media from last season with that roster will change for this season. It isn’t the end of the world, as freshening things up is a good thing, it just would have been nice to see how we could have built on last season’s success going into the new season with a re-hashed social media plan.

Focus on youth opportunity

As was a large importance for our team last season, focusing on younger players will be paramount to how we play again this season. It is important to remember that this is just a recreational league in Bermuda, but unfortunately it is the only competitive league outside of the local high school league for young players. We have been in constant contact with Hurricane Basketball Academy (who I am an alumni of) regarding any high school age players who might want to declare for the draft. If they do so, we will do our best to draft them or then pick them up on the waiver wire.

Unfortunately (for whatever reason) the BBA chose not to advertise the league to local high schools for players aged 16+ to put their name forward for the draft, so I don’t anticipate seeing new talent come out to play, which is a shame. It is obvious that the Bermuda Basketball Association does not have a commitment to developing youth, so we will be giving younger players a chance to play, should they show any interest in doing so.

Exciting playing style

With this being a recreational league the important thing is to have fun, and what better way to do that than getting up and down the court? Taking a similar approach to last season which saw us win the league title, we will be employing a transition based approach to run the older teams out of the game by the first half. I know this sounds extremely cocky, but to be quite honest, until the BBA realizes that this league is literally just for fun, younger teams will dominate if they can run and dribble/shoot the ball at a decent level.

More importantly, this is what makes our team an exciting one to follow during the season, and hopefully will allow us to provide some really entertaining content for our followers. At the end of the day, we are going to try to win and give everyone on our team the chance to play, which I’m very much looking forward to! There are already a few players who are not in Bermuda for the duration of the league, so there will already be some fresh faces, but I’m sure that will lead to some exciting games!

Back-to-Back?

If we were to run it back with our championship winning team from last season, I have no doubt we could go back-to-back. However, that just isn’t the case with this being a draft league and not a ‘pick your own team’ league, as was the case last year. We are definitely going to give it our all, but we will have to wait and see what our roster looks like. Above all else, I’ll be drafting a team that I know I can work with and who are young and exciting players, without massive egos to ruin the game for everyone else. You never know how the season will progress, so never say never, and best of luck to all the other teams!

What’s next…

I hope you all enjoyed that one, kind of a simple one this week as well. I should have a more detailed post next week when we’ve hopefully (fingers crossed) drafted the teams and have a firm start date!

Enjoy your weekend everyone!

Cheers,

Jason