Aau Champs Remove All Doubt Shelbyville, Team Texas Rule Divisions With 10-0 Records During Tourney Week

After 315 games in seven days to eliminate 110 teams, the final day of the AAU National 18U and 16U Girls Basketball Championships was a breeze.

No “if necessary” games were needed Saturday to wrap up the tournament at Eastern Washington University.

First, Shelbyville (Tenn.) Sports Shack won the 16U tournament with a 71-64 victory over the Maryland Chesapeake Hurricanes.

Then, Team Texas defeated California Gold 77-71.

Both champions finished the tournament 10-0.

Sweet 16 “This is awesome, the best ever,” said Shelbyville’s Monica Dillon, the 16U Most Valuable Player.

Shelbyville, 45 miles southeast of Nashville, scored the final 15 points of the game, holding the Hurricanes scoreless for the final 3 minutes, 33 seconds. Dillon, a 6-foot-2 post, scored 27 points, including six in the final run.

Nikki Teasley, a 6-1 guard considered the top prospect in the tournament, led the Maryland team with 27 points. Her basket with 3:33 to play put the Hurricanes up 64-56.

Jesse Taylor and all-tournament selection Allison Clark hit 3-pointers for Shelbyville to make it a game and Dillon tied it with a pair of free throws with 1:40 left. Dillon then took a feed from Katie Smith to put Shelbyville ahead before Smith hit 3 of 4 free throws. Dillon scored the final two points from the line with 7 seconds left.

“Coach said to settle down and start executing our offense,” Clark, a 5-5 guard said. “He said, ‘There’s 3 minutes left and you don’t want to play another 40.”’ That ended a somewhat amazing run considering Shelbyville finished third in the state AAU tournament.

“We’ve done a lot of growing up before we got here; we came together as a team,” Dillon said.

The team got together about a month before the state tournament in March and after a two-week break began practicing again.

“I won a state championship before but this is so big,” said Clark, who was on a Shelbyville High School championship team as a sophomore in 1995. “We knew we were good but this is awesome. At state (in high school), there is a bigger crowd but this is the best of the best from every state.”

Been there, done that

Chasity Myers is going east and Shannon Anders is heading west to play college basketball, but they’ll always be together when they remember how their careers began and their high school careers ended.

Myers was perfect on eight free throws in the final 3 minutes to lift the Dallas/Fort Worth-area team to the 18U championship.

That gave Myers and Anders a perfect ending to a seven-year run that had a perfect beginning. The two guards were teammates for the Texas Shooting Stars championship team in the 11U national tournament in Orlando, Fla., in 1990.

“The under-11 was a little tournament and when we won, great,” said Anders, who is going to California-Irvine. “Now I know how hard it is to win.”

Myers, a George Washington signee and all-tournament selection, added, “In the 11U tournament we didn’t expect to win. We were just working hard and doing whatever our coaches said. This one we knew we could win. We just came in and worked out butts off.”

Team Texas also put Kansas-bound Lynn Pride on the all-tournament team and Tamika Catchings, a 6-1 five-position player who just finished her junior year, was named the Most Valuable Player. It was also the second championship for Catchings, who was on the 16U champion Chicago Hustle two years ago.

“It’s different people,” Catchings said of the two championships. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to win one and I won two.”

The talent level makes the 18U title special, however, and that is why she’ll be one of the most hotly pursued players until the early-signing period in November.

“The talent and level of competition is different,” she said. “Most of the starting five (on every team) are top players. … You’ll hear about a lot of them next year (in college).”

Stars of Stars

No Spokane Stars made the 16U all-tournament team. The 16 Stars finished ninth, which will make them a seeded team in the 18U tournament next year in Tennessee.

The 18U Stars, who finished seventh, were a little luckier. Alli Nieman, a 6-1 forward from Sandpoint, made the team and all the pictures that went with it. Mead’s Stacy Clinesmith was accidently left off the list. She got her plaque late but missed all the photo ops.

You’re all wet

The Michigan Motor City Blazers were disappointed when they rallied from a big deficit but lost to California Gold 84-79 at EWU Friday morning.

They got over it quickly when they found themselves headed to Priest Lake, guests of the Bob Richards family. Richards was a clock operator during the tournament.

“He talked to our coach and assistant coach and made the plans,” Michigan player Katie Kerr said. “He said he liked we way we hustled and how we played.” The Detroit-area girls went skiing, tubing and knee boarding and enjoyed a barbecue.

“We thought they were crazy,” said Laura Hatzl, who after never being able to get up on skis before made it on her first try at Priest. “Our team? Our whole team?”

Kerr, by the way, has signed with the University of Washington. Two years ago at a tournament in Colorado, her team upset a Bay Area team led by Jamie Redd, who was being scouted by the Huskies. Later, the Michigan team beat a Utah team with Malinda Lynch, another Huskie prospect.

The Huskies got Redd and Lynch, who just finished their freshman year. Now Kerr, a 5-9 guard, is ready to play with them.

Last word

The 317 total games did not include the Shootout Tournaments for teams that did not advance out of pool play into the double-elimination championship tournament for both age groups.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo