Stars Have Acquired Regional Competition Four Other Area Teams Show Up In Tournament’s Two Divisions
When it comes to AAU girls basketball in the Inland Empire, there are the Spokane Stars and cannon fodder.
The Stars have represented the Inland Empire in national tournaments for about as long as the AAU has been having them.
Not this year.
With the AAU Nationals 18U and 16U Girls Basketball Championships in the Spokane area this week, several new faces have shown up.
The Tri-City area and Troy, Idaho, have teams in the 16U tournament and Yakima and Moses Lake are entered in the 18U. Those are besides the two Stars teams, regional winner and host representative, in each bracket.
“We basically wanted to build something in central Washington around Moses Lake,” Carey Carlson, coach of the Viking Stars, said. “If they’re not good enough to make the Stars, they don’t do anything. We hope to improve year after year.”
Carlson’s assistant is her husband, Chris. The roles are reversed during the school year when Chris is the women’s head coach at Big Bend Community College in Moses Lake.
“We basically put together a team of girls that are going to play at the community college level,” Carey Carlson said. “When you play against good competition, you improve. The competition here is extremely high. The players we have are going to be good.” As Carey James, Carey Carlson played at Central Valley High School in the late 1980s.
There are many 18U players who have signed scholarships with Division I colleges. The difference shows in scores of the Vikings games. The Vikings lost their opener to a Texas team 86-41. Against Wisconsin UC White, they fell 70-61. Pacific California Gold rolled 100-62. Monday it was a 71-65 setback to Arizona.
“We lost by six today after being down by 20,” Carey Carlson said. “(Our) level of play is getting higher and higher and we’re playing harder and harder as the tournament goes go.”
Maybe it just took that long for the Vikings to get used to that level of play.
“It didn’t surprise me, but I think it surprised the girls,” Carey Carlson said. “It’s good for them. Even though they won’t play these girls, they have to get used to better competition.”
Stargazing
Jennifer Swinton scored 24 points as the Spokane Stars 18U No. 1 team pulled away late in the second half to defeat the Arkansas Mavericks 93-81 to earn the top seed out of their pool.
Now the Stars get to rest until a 6:30 game tonight at North Central against a team that has to play at 10:30 a.m. Pacific California Gold meets Utah College Bound at NC with the winner facing the Stars.
Stacy Clinesmith added 19 points for the Stars, who overcame foul trouble to center Ali Nieman. Swinton picked up the slack before fouling out in the final minutes.
The Stars 16U No. 1 team didn’t fare as well playing for the top seed out of its pool. Shelbyville, Tenn., Sports Shop went on a 12-0 run in the final 4 minutes to edge the Stars 86-79. Crystal Lee had 20 points and Tricia Lamb 19 for the Stars.
The Stars play at 8:30 this morning against the Bucks County, Pa., Wildcats, which won their pool with a 4-0 record.
Both Stars Too teams failed to qualify out of pool play and are participating in the double-elimination shootout tournament.
The 18U Too team, which went 1-2, plays the Kansas Belles in the University High School auxilary gym at 1:45 p.m.
The 16U Too team, 0-3, plays Indiana Top Recruit at 1:45 at Mountain View Middle School.
Geography lesson
Former Washington coach Chris Gobrecht, who took the job at Florida State this spring, walked into the Mountain View gym Sunday to watch the Georgia Trojans.
When asked how she was doing after so many successful years with the Huskies, she said, “Other than the fact it’s tearing my heart out to come back to Washington with another name on my chest?”
Well, yes.
“It’s the same thing, just a different focus of games to go to see,” she said. “What’s frustrating is I used to know who the teams were to see.”
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