HAMPTON, Va. — In his more than 30 years of experience around organized basketball and developing players, Kashif Johnson is getting in on a new venture at the ground floor.
Last week, team executives announced the official expansion of the "Virginia Neptunes", the latest expansion team to enter the fray into The Virtuoverse Basketball League (TVBL), a semi-professional basketball league with teams in major metros areas like Philadelphia, Atlanta, Memphis and more.
Johnson, affectionately called "Coach Stretch", said the inaugural games this October focus on stretching out the career opportunities for basketball players who may have slipped through the cracks of athletic play in college due to injury
"Maybe gone unnoticed, injuries to them but they can still play, and still have aspirations to try to make it to professional ranks, overseas, G-League or NBA. Whatever it is, it’s a platform for people to get there," Johnson said.
Ed Huckaby, the Neptunes' General Manager, said there will be a series of mini-camps (both open and invite-only) starting in July, with the intent to roster anywhere from 12 to 15 players.
Both Huckaby and Johnson acknowledged that there are serious conversations about ways in which the league can work in tandem with the G-League to act as a "filtering system."
“This league can be a filtering system into the G-League, because it can only carry so many guys because resources are limited," Johnson says.
The 16-game schedule will have eight home games and eight away games, which Huckaby said should be played at Phenix Middle School pending approval from school leaders in the division.
The cities to host teams to play in the 2023-24 TVBL schedule are located in:
North Conference
- Mount Vernon, NY
- Brooklyn, NY
- Philadelphia, PA
- York, PA
- Middle River, MD
- Jenkins Township, PA
- Severn, MD
- Baltimore, MD
South Conference
- Fredericksburg, VA
- Charlottesville, VA
- Hampton, VA
- Virginia Beach, VA
- Atlanta, GA
- Savannah, GA