In a letter to Greensborosports.com……
FROM THE PROUD PARENT OF A PAGE PIRATE BASKETBALL PLAYER MITCHELL OATES:
MY SON SCORED 35 POINTS (TOURNAMENT HIGH SCORER) AND HAD 6 ASSISTS IN THE LAST GAME AGAINST NORTHERN. THE PREVIOUS GAME, HE SCORED 11 POINTS (TEAM HIGHEST SCORER) AGAINST GREENSBORO DAY. IN HIS FIRST GAME, HE HAD 16 POINTS, 8 REBOUNDS, AND 6 ASSISTS.
STATISTICALLY, HOW DID HE NOT MAKE THE ALL TOURNAMENT TEAM? HIS HEAD COACH DIDN’T UNDERSTAND WHY HE DIDN’T MAKE THE TEAM AND I DON’T EITHER.
WHAT DO I SAY???? HE ASKED ME “WHAT MORE DID THEY WANT?” WHAT WAS THE TOURNAMENT MVP PLAYER’S STATS LIKE?
I hope the Oates the family didn’t mind me printing their letter here at the site. They have some valid questions…..
Mitchell Oates did all he could to help the Pirates and I can tell you, I like his game. I watched Oates play against Ragsdale earlier in the year and I couldn’t believe waht I was seeing. This kid has improved so much over last year. I can get tired watching him play because he not only scores and dishes off assists, he slices and penetrates so much it almost hurts to watch him heading into traffic.
Oates(#10 for the Pirates) uses so much energy you wonder where he gets it all from. He is very solid and we saw him coming on in the second half of last season, as he and Christian McCain stepped up to help lead the Page Pirates to the Metro 4-A Conference tournament title in the finals over Grimlsey.
The effort by Oates is there and the numbers to back up Mitchell Oates are there.
Here’s what hurt his chances of getting on the first team All-Tournament squad. Greensboro Day won the title, so as always the Champions will eat up a number of the first team spots. I believe GDS got two spots plus the MVP and the Pizza Hut runner-up Ragsdale landed two spots and Northern Guilford, the third-place finisher in the tourney, grabbed the final spot.
The selection committee was looking not only at the overall numbers, but where the kids’ teams finished in the tournament. Whose spot does Mitchell Oates take? That’s a hard call. Jonathan Frye of Northern had good numbers and he led his team, the Nighthawks, to a third place finish as they beat Page in the consolation game. Do you pull one of the kids from Ragsdale, or do you take one spot from Greensboro Day?????
This is a good one for crowd discussion. It’s a hard deal to take away from the kids that are on the first team already, but with an eight-team field of competition, why not have a second team and maybe Mitchell Oates gets on first team and one of the kids from the first squad goes to the second, or maybe Oates makes second team All-Tournament.
Excellent food or fuel for thought and maybe by having a second team All-Tournament squad this might open the doors up for some other kids too…….
I hope the Oates family doesn’t mind us using this topic for open discussion and if they do we can take this post down and start another one. They are good people, and Mitchell deserves and needs the exposure.
This is such a good topic and it is very timely so I wanted to get it up and in the mix here this morning.
As a Pirate fan I love Mitchell Oates, but I know All-Tourney isn’t just about stats. It is about winning, and they could have had a much better showing vs GDS and had numerous chances to win vs NG. If he plays within their system, which is built for guys like Oates, he can be an All-Area type performer.
Mitchell Oates is an outstanding stand-out player for Page. He is also a consistent player as well as a team player. I would like to see more players like Mitch with not only God-given talent but a head and a heart for the game as well. I think Mitch should have gotten an all tourney trophy, and if there aren’t enough trophies to go around, they aught to just give out more! I also feel like EVERY team should have at least one representative on the all tournament team. Little 4 planners for next year, are you listening????????
I guess its about the stats for the girls. 2 of the all tourney spots came from 4th and 5th place teams
This makes me sick! Exactly what is wrong with high school sports today. Is the all-tournament team the most important thing going on. What about winning? How come they are not upset about winning the game? No disrespect, but he was nowhere near being one of the best 5 players in the tourney. It’s not all about numbers. He may have scored 11 against GDS, but how many turnovers did he have that game. As far as that goes, how many did he have against Northern Guilford? It is not a perfect science. But lets not get caught up in individual achievement. Lets start worrying more about wins and losses. The family should be writing letters to ask why they cant win a game against a good team. Why they look so out of control and undisciplined everytime they play in the Little 4. If my memory serves me, there was a kid from GDS who won MVP a few years ago who didnt score in double figures for the whole tournament combined. The PG. I think his name was Alan Fox. They got it right that year. And probably was closer to getting it right this year. I could go on for hours. But Page will never win until team accpmplishments become more important than individual.
As far as the comments about being the leading scorer in the tournament, that is nowhere close to being true. I know for a fact that Jay Canty had 27 points against Northern ( a game they won) and had double figures against GDS. So just in those two games he scored more than 35 points. Get over it already. This type of stuff really eats at me.
Hoopsnut, I believe the 35pts tourney high was in reference to a single game not multiple games. I don’t think anyone scored higher than Oates 35pts he put up against Northern. I really don’t recall anyone hittn 30. He had bout 62 total for the tourney. I don’t know the kid never really paid attention to him but props should be given when due, win or lose. I saw the page/northern game and agree “the team” lost. Can’t put blame on just one person because it was a little bit of everybody. However, he put his work in and deserves a job well done rgardless. They played against a good team. Now they gotta put some time in on watching them tapes and fix it in practice and move on to the next game.