AFL scouting US college basketball players

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/ncaab--aus ... 21033.html

The man responsible for identifying those athletes is hardly a newcomer to scouting basketball. Jonathan Givony, founder of the popular NBA draft-themed site DraftExpress.com, began consulting for the Sydney Swans in 2009 and has worked for the AFL identifying basketball players for its annual U.S. combine since the months leading up to the inaugural 2012 edition.

Unfamiliar with Australian football prior to consulting for the Swans, Givony fell in love with the sport after attending the 2009 Grand Final played before more than 100,000 fans. The next couple seasons, he regularly stayed up until the wee hours of the morning watching AFL telecasts and combing YouTube for highlights, trying to gain a better understanding of the sport and the physical attributes good ruckmen or defenders possess.

Each year, Givony makes a list of soon-to-graduate college basketball players 6-foot-6 or taller who are unlikely to play in the NBA or an elite European league but have enough rebounds, steals or dunks to suggest they're athletic enough to interest AFL teams. Givony then talks to people familiar with those players to get a feel for their character and watches footage of them via the scouting tool, Synergy, in order to verify they have skill set to succeed in the AFL.

The players Givony targets may not understand the most basic rules of Australian football but their potential is obvious during combine testing. At the first U.S. combine alone, six of the 25 players in attendance eclipsed the previous Australian football record for vertical leap, which had been 30.7 inches.

"They need guys who are athletic as hell, who are big and who are tough," Givony said. "It's a very physical sport and it's not for the faint of heart. There's a lot of soft guys who play basketball and get away with it. You really have to be a tough dude to play Australian football. So that really narrows down the field a lot.The other thing is guys have to have a certain mental capacity as well. You're learning an entirely new sport and it's a very tactical sport. There's a lot of rules and training, and on top of that Australians are very big on team camaraderie, character and the ability to work within a group. If you bring in an American guy who has never played the sport, you almost have to be of higher character because you have to be accepted into that group."

It's interesting that they are investing decent money in this. It makes sense given how big and athletic basketball players are, but it could be pretty difficult for them to pick up the skills for a game that they've never heard of.

Given how well some players from Ireland have done recently though, there is no reason American players couldn't be a success. Plus with their athletic ability, it's not unthinkable that one could develop into a Nic Naitanui type player if they mastered the skills of the game.

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there has also been a recent trend with American football Tight Ends being former basketball players.