Skill gets built
one rep at a time.
AAU shows what a player already has. It does not build anything. Blacktop Academy is the other five months: drill work, repetition, and decision making at game speed, on outdoor courts in Bellevue, Newport and Fort Thomas.
Coach
Alex Grant
Eight years coaching middle school, high school and college basketball, men's and women's programs. Three year college player and team captain. Multiple 1,000 point scorers, two of whom reached the mark after starting development work with him.
$200 per session. Seasonal packages available.
01 / The numbers nobody puts on a poster
of high school boys basketball players go on to play NCAA basketball at any division.
540,704 high school participants, 19,617 NCAA participants. NCAA, 2024-25
reach Division III, the single largest pathway for men. Division II ties Division I at 1.1%.
Chasing only D1 ignores roughly two thirds of the real opportunities. NCAA, 2024-25
of high school girls basketball players reach the NCAA. The odds are better on the girls side at every division.
356,240 high school participants, 16,823 NCAA participants. NCAA, 2024-25
Swope
02 / The method
What actually happens in a session
Every plan is built around the player in front of me: their position, their body, the way they already play. Then it is repetition, and it is decisions made in a split second, because that is what the game is.
- 01Assess the way they play now
Not a generic skills test. What they reach for under pressure, and what they avoid.
- 02Drill the gap, not the highlight
Volume on the thing that is missing, at the pace it will be needed.
- 03Add a defender and a clock
Skill that only works unguarded is not skill yet. Reads, pace, and live ball decisions.
- 04Repeat it until it holds up tired
The rep that counts is the one made in the fourth quarter with legs gone.
Tile A
The Academy
A high contrast serif and a warm paper ground, the register of a coaching institution rather than a hype brand. Headlines sit in solid knockout plates directly on undarkened daylight photographs, so the courts read as they actually look. Orange is the only loud color on the page.