The Bahamas Basketball Federation's (BBF) "Summer of Thunder" Tournament provided Bahamian basketball fans with three weeks of competitive action at the Kendal G.L Isaacs National Gymnasium. The exhibition series began on August 2 and concluded on August 25.
This year's version of the tournament was the largest so far, as it featured 14 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I colleges, 11 local teams, two international teams and even one professional basketball club from France.
Each day of the tournament, a college team went up against one of the local squads, which were made up of ex-collegiate, semi-pro and professional players. The match-ups produced some entertaining basketball match-ups and featured quite a few stunning upsets. The biggest upset had to be the locally-based Providence Storm defeating the University of North Carolina (UNC) Tar Heels by one point, 84-83, on a desperation three-point heave.
Some of the other participating collegiate schools included the University of Kentucky, Ohio State University, Ole Miss and Portland State University.
Besides the record number of teams that attended, another milestone for the BBF would have to be that some of the games were televised. Those televised games featured the Kentucky Wildcats, who were on their "Big Blue Bahamas" Tour, playing the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rican national teams and the Champagne Chalons-Reims basketball club out of France.
The Wildcats finished the exhibition series with a 5-1 win/loss record after losing their final game to the Dominican Republic on a last second shot.
The Wildcats' games were featured on ESPNU and the SEC Network, and received commentary from ESPN college basketball analyst Jay Bilas. Also, more than 1,000 Kentucky fans accompanied the team on their trip to The Bahamas.
Organizer of the tournament, Sean Bastian, expressed that this year is just a taste of what the "Summer of Thunder" can become and feels that it has "Battle 4 Atlantis" potential.
"'Success' is the only word I can think of to describe the tournament. I was able to get Atlantis to assist me with the scoreboard, the clock and I even almost had their floor. This year, we had ESPN come on-board, we brought three international teams over and hosted the Wildcats' "Big Blue Bahamas" Tour. I couldn't ask for more than that. I think this will get a lot of division one teams to see "Summer of Thunder" as that tournament that they need to be a part of," said Bastian.
"We are hoping that ESPN will sign a full-time agreement to do all of the games and not just the big ones. This tournament has a lot of potential to bring visitors to these shores, and I feel that both the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture and the Ministry of Tourism need to sit down with the federation or myself and see how they can assist. When you look at the 14 teams and what they left economically with the hotels, ground transportation and food, they left about a million dollars here. All this happened in just three weeks, but my goal for the tournament is to have it for three months."
One of the main things that could bring not just ESPN, but other media outlets to the country is players like young Bahamian prospect, Deandre Ayton. Coaches, scouts and media personnel showed up to every game he played, even if their teams weren't playing. The chance to see the 6' 11" 10th grader in action could be enough to fill seats on its own.
"We have a definite future pro in him. I looked at one of the stat sheets from one of the games, and he scored 22 points and had nine rebounds against guys in their junior and senior years in college. I remember when he was just an exceptionally tall kid. His future looks very bright," said Bastian.
Although he felt the tournament was a success, Bastian expressed that he still wants to make some tweaks to it, and although the changes won't happen overnight, he feels confident that the new goals will be accomplished.
"My main concerns are with the facilities. Kendal Isaacs has bleacher seating, which is not comfortable to watch a game. Secondly, you can't sell a bleacher, but you can sell a seat. There were some other things as well, but in all we just need a new facility. I would really like to connect with one of the ministries and see what we can do. There were also some concerns about the officiating, but we play under a different set of rules, so I'm not too concerned about that," said Bastian.
The exhibition games wrapped up on Monday night with the locally-based Providence Storm beating another foreign opponent, the Portland State University Vikings, 75-73. It was the third victory for the Storm over a NCAA Division I school in the 2014 BBF's "Summer of Thunder" Tournament.

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