As Matt Cross took the floor for the Boston Athletic Basketball Association’s 16-and-under squad at the AAU national tournament last week in Orlando, there was a lot on the line for the Beverly teen.

His sophomore team was less than a week from winning the NIKE Peach Invitational in Georgia. And on Sunday, BABC was facing North Carolina-based Adidas Team Loaded for the title.

Trailing Adidas by 6 points with two minutes left, BABC rallied for a 68-62 victory.

“The championship game was so back and forth,’’ said Cross, a 6-foot-7-inch rising junior forward who is headed to Connecticut’s Woodstock Academy after attending Cushing Academy (Ashburnham) this past year.

“The fact that we stuck with it and pulled it out was really special,’’ added Cross, who scored 20 points in the final.

Acton’s Mitch Doherty, a rising 6-7 senior at Worcester Academy, played on the BABC 17U /Junior team that finished third in Orlando.

“I think this is the time of year when we really jell as a team, we have great chemistry,’’ said Doherty. “We faced some adversity and we played tough, shared the ball, and finished third. Obviously I wish we finished first, but I thought we did pretty well.’’

The tournament was a July showcase event, with college coaches from all levels in attendance.

“Yeah, you’re thinking about it,’’ said Doherty, who already has received a scholarship offer from the University of Massachusetts. “You look into the crowd and you can see coaches. It’s hard not to think about it.’’

Cross, with offers from Connecticut, Penn State, and Tulane, said that it is impossible to ignore the coaches’ presence in the building.

“You know they’re there,’’ Cross said. “But I try not to worry about it. I try to get caught up in the game and focus on my team winning, not on myself winning.’’

That mind-set, according to Doherty, pays off, because a winning team will get “more looks’’ from college coaches.

Top high school players join prestigious teams, many sponsored by sneaker brands like Nike or Adidas, to get exposure and be seen and recruited by Division 1 coaches. But the 2017 FBI investigation into recruitment-related corruption cast a pall of suspicion and cynicism over the landscape. In an indictment, high-ranking Adidas officials were charged with steering players, with payments of tens of thousands of dollars, toward certain schools. Agents and college coaches from top schools also are being accused of participating in the scandal that has rocked NCAA basketball.

In response, the Commission on College Basketball led by Condoleezza Rice has made a series of recommendations meant to “address issues it believes are responsible for corrupting the sport.’’ Prominent in the commission’s report is a call to “mitigate non-scholastic basketball’s harmful influence on college basketball.’’

One proposal includes having a series of regional and national camps, operated by the NCAA, for recruits to attend and be seen by college coaches. This would not force programs such as AAU to change their operations, but it would shift college basketball’s attention elsewhere.

Leo Papile, the head coach and founder of BABC, said he’s not concerned with what college coaches do.

“What we do, we’re still going to do,’’ Papile said. “What the NCAA coaches do is not our problem. If they decide not to come, we’ll still be doing the identical things we’ve been doing.’’

He went as far as to say he’d prefer college coaches don’t attend his team’s games, because they pose a potential distraction to players.

Some of his players, though, opposed any change that would remove coaches from their summer tournaments. Cross and Doherty are both keeping track of developments in the recruiting world, as their collegiate futures could be affected by any changes.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,’’ Doherty said. “These tournaments are how we get exposure. You don’t get live games in camps. Camp play is more like, ‘Can you dunk a ball?’ or ‘How many shots can you make?’ There’s nothing like live games.’’

Cross agreed. “If you’re trying to see players, you don’t want to see them in a camp. You want to see them in a team, playing against other teams.’’

Another BABC sophomore, Vondre Chase of Watertown, said he wants to play in front of as many coaches as possible, because he wants to play Division 1 basketball and “that’s how you get seen and noticed.’’

Chase, a rising junior at Beaver Country Day, said he’d rather compete with his teammates than play “one man for himself’’ at a camp. He said the toughest test for a player is in a competitive game, and camps are often focused on who can pull off “the fanciest move.’’

Bill Coen, men’s basketball head coach at Northeastern University, said he expects change to come as a result of the FBI investigation.

“The recruiting arena is extremely complex,’’ Coen said. “It’s a complicated process. It’s not all good and not all bad. It’s kind of a cross section of society. You have a lot of people doing a lot of good, but unfortunately, you see in the headlines there are a few outliers who aren’t behaving properly.’’

Charlie Wolfson can be reached at charlie.wolfson@globe.com.