TAMPA – Florida has reveled with stars like Vince Carter, Tracy McGrady and David Robinson being linked to their talent pool. These homegrown superstars put a spotlight on Florida, but left Tampa Bay unnoticed.
Even within its state lines, Tampa Bay might not be seen by college coaches as a hot-spot for basketball talent like its I-4 neighbor Orlando or even Miami. Because of that, it leaves a lot of very talented high school athletes under-recruited, or not recruited at all. Many basketball players’ dreams of playing at the collegiate level are left slashed.
“Kids are underappreciated in this area and I think that’s a major problem for basketball. It’s just kind of forgotten about, which is a shame for sure,” said Prep Hoops’ Florida Jake Perper.
People like Perper are bridging the gap between high school basketball athletes and college coaches. As the lead scout for Prep Hoops’ Florida division, Perper interacts with hundreds of college coaches every year with one goal in mind: getting student-athletes on scholarship to play college basketball.
“When you look at Florida – people say that Orlando basketball and Miami basketball are good – but they don’t think much of Jacksonville, Sarasota, Tampa or Fort Myers, which have decent kids,” Perper said. “I think it’s a regional thing that people forget that there’s athletes all over the place. Florida’s such a big state.”
The University of Tampa graduate has covered over 200 regular season games during the past two high school basketball seasons, finding thousands of athletes all over the state that could benefit from an article or a mention in a phone call to a college coach. His efforts from November to early March don’t include all the off-season work that he does. Perper goes to team camps at University of South Florida (USF), Florida State University, University of Florida and other in-state programs and American Athletic Union (AAU) workouts.
“If that one little write-up helps them get a look, I’m going to include them,” Perper said.
Perper has recently conducted a five-part series of unsigned Class of 2020 seniors to help coaches connect with these players during the NCAA-imposed dead period, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“There were so many kids that I forgot about that should deservedly be on the list. The reaction from the parents and high school coaches has been great. I had a call with a coach and every single kid he asked me about was in one of those write-ups,” Perper said.
As the newly minted Southeast Scouting Director for the Prep Hoops Circuit, Perper takes over a hundred calls every week talking with high school, AAU and college coaches as well as athletes to continue bridging the gap.
“That’s the biggest thing I was looking forward to when taking the job,” Perper said. “Being able to see kids from all over the place, because that’s really fun to see. That builds up other kids that I’d normally not see, it helps them.”
Perper says his recruiting efforts are being helped by the talent that’s recently come out of the Bay Area. Tampa Catholic High School’s Kevin Knox was a one-and-done at Kentucky before being drafted by the New York Knicks in 2018 as a lottery pick. Wharton High School’s Darin Green Jr. became one of the newest stars of the American Athletic Conference with the University of Central Florida in the 2019-20 season.
In addition to his scouting efforts, Perper runs the Prep Hoops Sun Bash tournament in Miami and Clearwater that has brought college coaches – like USF men’s basketball coach Brian Gregory – to get their eyes on prospects that wouldn’t normally get attention.
“Conference play starts around the time we run it, so a lot of teams aren’t always available,” Perper said. “I knew that going into the week. But the USF’s, the Eckard’s, the University of Tampa’s, even FGCU, they’ll make the trip if they really want a kid. If a coach wants a kid bad enough, they’ll come. Colleges are going to come and squeeze it in.”
His efforts have made a difference in hundreds of athletes’ recruiting processes, but there’s one that sticks out to the Fort Myers native from his first year of scouting.
“My first summer covering AAU, I was talking to a Louisiana Tech coach about this kid – Amorie Archibald – and I said, ‘Man he’s good, he’s a real player, you need to go watch him.’ It was hours later and they offered him,” Perper said.
The junior from Trinity Christian Academy in Deltona still plays for the Bulldogs and was third on the team in scoring in the 2019-20 season. He’s just one of the hundreds of kids that Perper has helped over the last couple of years.
“The feeling of helping a kid, it’s just legitimately great,” Perper said. “It’s a lifetime of happiness for me.”
