PTL Thoughts, Night One
Like many other area residents, I stopped by North Liberty last night to watch the first round of Prime Time League action last night. It was exciting at times and boring at others, but I'll definitely be heading back next week to get my basketball fix again.

The biggest talk of the night seems to be Tony Freeman's performance. This is probably equally due to the fact that fans are anxiously waiting to learn if he'll live up to Coach Alford's hype and the fact that most of Iowa's players took the night off. Greg Brunner, Adam Haluska, Jeff Horner, Erek Hansen, and Mike Henderson were nowhere in sight, while Doug Thomas and Carlton Reed were sidelined with injuries.

Freeman's game (Team 5 vs. Team 6) was the only one that I saw in full, and I'm probably lucky it worked out that way. His team made a fairly big second half comeback with some hot three-point shooting. The game had some great individual performances, too, including UNI's Ben Jacobson, UNI verbal commitment Jordan Eglseder, Wisconsin recruit Jason Bohannon and Iowa's Alex Thompson. Team 6 was playing with only seven guys, and the 7-ish foot Eglseder was their only post threat, but he more than held his own against Thompson on the glass and on the offensive end. It's hard to learn much about a guy in just one game, but he looks like he could eventually be solid in the MVC. Jacobson could probably end up being my favorite player in the PTL, with his ability to both handle the ball and knock down shots from anywhere. Remind me to go to a UNI game or two next year.

So right, back to Freeman. He seemed nervous early on, as he threw a couple passes out of bounds for unforced turnovers. He looked more poised as the game wore on, and showed some great ballhandling ability. His passes started finding guys, and he single-handedly ran off the last 20 or seconds of the first half and came away with 3 points for his effort. Again, it's far too early to draw any conclusions, but a guy who can dribble and pass can play ahead of Mike Henderson on my team just about any day.
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