Strobed High School Boy's BBall

So I don't post my shots here much, but I like how these came out. C&C Appreciated.
I know the shots are a little small, but there's no happy medium between large and medium on Flickr. My focus tonite was to work on something more than a basket shot, which is what it seems like all I've been getting lately. Images are a little noisy due to me using a 3.5-4.5 lens. (Nikkor 18-70). The 17-35 was just way too wide and I was having to crop too much.

I like these when I consider that they are strobed. And it appears to be direct and not bounced based on the shadows. You got the faces, the ball (touching fingers). the vertical lines in the background are actually vertical, cropping is done well, etc. Good stuff.

Have you tried bouncing light off the gym ceiling?

I've thought about bouncing to reduce shadows but I like the recycle time that 1/4 gives me and this gym is one of the few in my area that actually has white walls.

At this game, the courtside traffic was too heavy to bounce as tripods had to be tucked away as much as possible.

Your pictures are solid. I think they could use a little fill light to help with the darker area's of the image but overall solid.

Hey I will take a strobed shot to a 3200 ISO 320ss any day of the week!

Thanks Matt!