The NEW Twin Cities Boys Hoops Has Arrived

It is with great joy that I announce the arrival of the new Twin Cities Boys Hoops! I've expanded the layout to allow more information and changed the color scheme to spice it up a bit. Here's a quick tour.

The left hand column has links for year round basketball. The most current season being at the top (in this case the upcoming 08-09 high school season) and the last being at the bottom. I've added 1 click links to all the local teams and conferences so you can your favorite team or conference at a glance via the Schedules & Results or Section and Conference Standings links. That information is courtesy of Minnesota-Scores.net. During the AAU season, the Summer Hoops and Recruiting Resources sections will move to the top. You'll find links to my posts on some of the top local players in the Featured Players section, links to Minnesota basketball info in the MN Basketball Resources section and links to what I read in The Czar's Reading List.

The right hand column is blog information. I've added a section for my schedule so you can see what games I'll be covering at a glance and quickly go read about recent games I've seen. There's a whole section of background information on me in Blog Information. My posts (scrolls as I refer to them) and the ability to search them are the next 2 sections. Finally we have an entire section of miscellaneous basketball links. Other Local Hoops Sites contains links to other local bloggers and/or specific basketball teams . The More Basketball Links section has other basketball links that I occassionally read or purchase from.

The middle section still contains the scrolls, but I've added on there too. Some of you may have noticed that I've started adding labels to posts. For very specific topics or players, I will labeling those. But I'm keeping the number of labels to a minimum and will usually have visible links to those instead of having to read the fine print of the posts to find them. Also, look for many more pictures in the posts this season thanks to Michael J Much of MNPhotonet.net. I only got to use a couple of his pictures last season, but I'm looking forward to showing more of them this season as he gets some terrific pictures.

You'll still get the same game coverage and I've kept popular features like the Current Scoring Records tracker that's been tracking Kevin Noreen since the day Cody Schilling broke the record. Many of the links to what I read you've seen before but I have added a few. For example, local coach John Carrier has just started a new blog. He’s been a high school coach in northern Minnesota for the last few years after helping to clean up my alma mater after I left it in shambles. In addition, he’s been published in Winning Hoops and has been an active contributor to the forums there. His 2 page article, “Get More From Your Undersized Post Players”, published in the March 2008 edition of Winning Hoops is a great read. This season he brings his experience to the metro. He’s a smart, up and coming coach and a great student of the game that I think we’ll hear more about in the future. A link to his blog (and other local blogs) can be found in the Other Local Hoops Sites section. You can also read it here. Between his blog and coach Dasovich's blog, I think these will give great coaching insights during the season.

I hope you enjoy the new layout and the new features. I enjoyed putting it together. If you have comments, questions or suggestions on the new site, please feel free to contact me.