Night Hoops By Carl Deuker

Brennon Morehead

Mrs. Dose

English 9

16 May 2023

Night Hoops by Carl Deuker

My book was Night Hoops by Carl Deuker about a story of a freshman basketball player who is fighting for a spot on the varsity lineup and is continuously being benched due to poor performance. Even though he does poorly at the start of the season as it goes on he earns his varsity spot and gets to play with his two other freshman classmates Trent and Luke. But at the start of the book Nick's view of Trent was very different. Nick believed that Trent was a bully and a bad kid that should be avoided and Trent help him prove that after Trent and his older brother Zack almost drown him in sewer water. But Nick soon learns that without the negative influence of his brother

Who at the beginning of the book are very different from each other. At the start of the book, Trent is seen as the school bully that no one likes and is involved in many bad activities with his brother Zack. But Trent is also good at basketball even though he doesn’t play for the school he and Nick play on the same community court and Trent is not someone you want to play with,” every guy on the court knew he was cheating, but no one wanted to back me”(Deuker 2). Trent would play dirty and threaten anyone that tried to call fouls against him. This is when Nick first starts disliking Trent but it only gets worse when one day while playing football in PE Nick accidentally pushes Trent into a ditch of muddy water and Trent promises revenge. Then later that day on his way home from school Nick gets attacked by Trent and Zack,” It was no use. I was drowning. They were killing me”(Deuker 36). They had gotten Nick and dunked him into a similar puddle of water nearly drowning him. After this, Nick assumes Trent will come after him for the rest of the year but surprisingly the next day Trent acts like nothing happened and Nick goes through his day without hearing from Trent. Until Nick’s P.E. class where they start a basketball tournament. Everyone knows the real reason though is that the tournament was being used as a pre-season evaluation for the head coach and to Nick’s surprise Trent is playing fair and playing really well convincing Luke that Trent will go out for basketball. Even though Nick doesn’t believe Trent will go out on the first day of tryouts Trent unexpectedly walks into the locker room and gets ready for the practice and works really hard. After this Trent and Nick start to come closer as Trent’s father figure, Steve Clay, asks Nick’s mom if he can bring Trent over at night to practice basketball when he gets off work. When Nick hears about this he is convinced his mom will say no but much to his