It’S All About Competition ‘Imports’ Generate Mixed Reactions, Results As Hoopfest Takes To Downtown Streets

There’s no crying in baseball. We learned that several years back from Tom Hanks in “A League of Their Own.”

Now comes Jeff Hibbert, suggesting there should, likewise, be no sniveling in basketball - especially in the Action Sportswear Over 6-foot Open Division of Hoopfest.

According to Hibbert, that’s where teams are supposed to test themselves against the best entered in the world’s largest 3-on-3 street basketball tournament, which opened its annual two-day run in downtown Spokane on Saturday.

And that’s why Hibbert, a Hoopfest veteran, thinks any Open Division player with a gripe about the “ringer” teams brought in from New York and Los Angeles for this year’s event should stick a sock in it.

“Why should anybody be upset?” Hibbert asked after his Ozzy’s Bar & Grill team from Kalispell, Mont., was knocked into the losers’ bracket by Riverside Church and Y, a New York-based team composed of three former Big East Conference players. “I think it’s great to see how you stack up against players from other parts of the country.”

Several other Open Division players expressed disgust in the decision of Hoopfest organizers to fly in “guest” teams from both coasts, put them up in a hotel for two nights and pay for their food, all while reducing the chances of teams from the Pacific Northwest winning the prestigious Open Division title.

“I don’t like it at all,” said Mark Mader, who plays for Lone Pines out of Seattle. “We read the newspaper articles about these guys and it was, like, ‘Well, I guess we’ve still got a chance to finish second.’ “They draw enough good teams just from our region. They shouldn’t have to bring these guys in.”

As it turned out, not everything went as planned for either Riverside Church and Y, which had to fight through the fatigue of Friday’s 15-hour, weather-plagued journey from New York to win its first two games, or Drew Crew L.A., which was unceremoniously dumped into the losers’ bracket following a 20-10 first-round loss to the PacifiCare Northerners out of Seattle.

Drew Crew’s early defeat seemed to stun a curious crowd of several hundred that had gathered around Nike Center Court to watch the select team of all-stars from the notorious Dino Smiley Pro-Am League. But it was taken in stride by PacifiCare players, who have some impressive resumes of their own.

“We weren’t worried about them,” said 6-foot-8 Greg Trapp, who played collegiately at Oregon under coach Don Monson. “If you can go to Oregon and play, you can play against anybody. I wasn’t really impressed. I’ve played against a lot of big guys.”

Rance “The Thunder Down Under” Glasgow, another 6-7 widebody, who played on Central Missouri State’s Division II national championship team of 1984, said he approached Drew Crew as just another good Open Division team. But he admitted their style was more one-on-one and get-to-the-basket than teams in Seattle’s summer leagues.

“They were really physical,” he said. “But each one of their guys was looking for their own offense instead of helping each other out.”

Trapp agreed.

“I’ve played in L.A. before and it’s rough,” he said. “But to me, they kept trying to go to the basket because they couldn’t shoot. Their big guys had to get near the basket to score and we were able to keep them away. That’s what hurt them.”

Drew Crew coach Ervin Monier said he and his players were a little surprised by the caliber of the teams at Hoopfest, but vowed to uphold the honor of L.A. basketball.

“We like the pressure,” he said of dropping into the losers’ bracket. “I still think we’ll do a good job of representing Los Angeles, because we’re definitely out here to win this thing. We’re not on vacation.

“The Dino Smiley is one of the best summer leagues in any city in the nation and it’d be pretty hard to walk back in (the gym) not having represented it properly.”

Drew Crew bounced back from its opening-round loss to win two loserout games Saturday afternoon. It will play another elimination game this morning at 8:30 on the Action Sportswear Court No. 1.

Riverside Church and Y, after dusting off its first two opponents 20-12 and 20-5, plays at 9:30 this morning on the Safeco Court.

The New Yorkers seemed genuinely happy to be playing after having their Friday flight schedule thrown off by a 2-hour weather delay back East.

“We’ve been observing all the other teams,” said 6-7 team captain Gordon Winchester, who played at Seton Hall. “They have a lot more jump shooters here that we have to go out and defend. It’s more one-on-one back home.”

Winchester displayed inside finesse and a wonderful touch from the outside in leading his team past Ozzy’s. His longtime friend, Lee Green, who played at St. John’s along with fellow Riverside teammate Lamont Middleton, teamed up with former University of Hartford (Conn.) star Ron Moye to give the New Yorkers a nearly unstoppable outside shooting game.

It was all very impressive to Hibbert, 41, and his over-40 teammates, who were placed into the Open Division after their entry form was returned late.

“They were really good,” he said, pointing out that his team was no match even though it won the 35-39 Open Division in 1995 and 1996 before being elevated to the Over-40 division last year. “And they were a bunch of good guys, too. They didn’t talk crap, they just played the game.

“We were saying, though, that we wished we could have played them 15 years ago when we only 25. They’d have only been 10 then, and we might have had a chance.”

ONLINE For tourney news and information, point your browser to www.spokane.net/hoopfest