Part I emphasized academics. College coaches will ask about your grades and test scores. If you implement the tasks in Part I, you will quickly be able to provide the information. This post will focus more on your basketball skill development.  Part III will center around recruiting.

Set Goals for the Upcoming Basketball Season
Growing as a player requires establishing targets to reach for. If you’re not pushing yourself by setting goals, you will settle for being the same player with the same skills as last season and the season before that and the season before that.

Completing the Evaluate Your Summer Basketball Performance task in Part I, should give you an idea of some goals you would like to accomplish for the upcoming school year. You can also talk with your school coach to assist with setting goals. Make sure to write down your goals. That way you can go back and view them periodically.

Create a Basketball Development Plan
If your goals consist of an increase in responsibilities on the court, an increase in your statistics, or an increase in playing time, it’s going to require increasing your skills. Watching and studying game film of yourself and others and working out in the gym (track or outside in the yard, driveway or sidewalk) consistently is what you have to do.

Create your plan (and implement the plan). You have a couple of months before school basketball season begins. This is the perfect time.

Create Your College Wish List
I wish I would have experienced college. I mean REALLY experienced college. Parties. Student Activities. Student Organizations. My college experience was centered around basketball. Then when I stopped playing basketball, my college experience was centered around working. So I was either playing basketball, studying (and more studying) or working internships. Nothing else. So as a former college athlete and non-college athlete,  I can pass this advice on to you. 

What do you want out of your college experience? Basketball players sometimes get so caught up in just being a basketball player that they forget about experiencing college. College is where you transition from a teenager into adulthood. Do you want to transition at a school close to home, within driving distance from home or far, far away from home? Do you want to be in the mountains or near a beach? What industry do you have an interest in working in? Do you want a college experience centered around basketball or one that caters to experiencing other aspects of being a student?

CollegeBoard.org supplies a great tool to help you really think about your college choice. Use it to help you come up with your wish list.