Houston, We're SOLVING A Problem

Greetings to all our friends in H-Town, or Clutch City as it was known in the Rockets hey day.  With almost 5 million people, basketball crazy Houston is one of the most happening basketball cities in the USA and the World.  It's also my hometown.  I got married there, earned my Bachelor's degree from the University of Houston & my son, Chip was born at Herrmann Hospital.  Wow, that was 23 years ago!

Above left:  D1 Nation Alumni Darrington Hobson & right: Garland Judkins

Most of you know me as being the architect of the Texas D1 Ambassadors and as a champion of giving players an opportunity to receive top flight exposure and ultimately an improved shot at receiving a college scholarship.  Although originally based out of Austin, we've had some incredible players from Houston including scoring wizard Fort Bend Bush's Junior Treasure (Texas Southern), Heritage Christian's Jason Ebie (TCU), Gulf Shores Academy's Darrington Hobson (New Mexico & Milwaukee Bucks) & Christian Life's Garland Judkins (Arizona/Texas A&M-Corpus Christi) to name a few.

I am excited to announce the launch of Max Ivany's D1 Nation-Houston.  Our goal is for this site to give additional coverage and an alternate voice when it comes to the reporting of high school and club basketball.  In no way is this a knock on my friend Jimmy Hicks at RCS Sports who does a great job.  Friendly, professional competition is a good thing! 

Our pledge, as with our Austin-San Antonio site is to provide lots of coverage and pictures of local players and schools including those outside the loop.  Yes, they play some pretty good basketball in the suburbs and communities surrounding Houston.  With 50 plus D1 signees annually coming out of Houston there is lots of news to report and players to spotlight, and there's plenty of good young ballers to bring to light.

Our goal is to cultivate relationships with high school as well as summer ball coaches from Tomball to Galveston & Katy to the North Shore and all points in between.  We'll establish a ranking system for prospects in the Greater Houston area from the 6th grade and on up.  We'll do this through our crack reporting team watching events all over the Metropolis and through the offering of our own D1 Nation evaluation/exposure camps & tournaments.  We'll shoot out of the gate with fall ball coverage and then into the school season and of course the summer ball wars.  We can hardly call them shoe wars anymore, can we?

We are blessed to have several outstanding basketball guys who will be contributing editors to the site.  Welcome to Orrin Bailey, who has overseen the All 4 Sports Dream Team program and has been an instructor at John Lucas' Camps as well as our own All American Prodigy Camp.  Welcome AW Robinson of Gym Range Training, & welcome Tim Glover who led Clear Lake to the Drum and went on to play at Pittsburgh and then UT-San Antonio.

Feel free to look our Austin-San Antonio site over for archived stories that will give you a pretty good preview of what to expect.  http://www.texasbasketballinc.blogspot.com/

So, pass it on.  Tell your friends, your coaches and your parents about this new site.  Bookmark it, and then hang on for the ride.  You can email me at  TexasBasketball@aol.com with any constructive criticicisms or suggested storylines.

 Coach Max Ivany   Editor