Grant has another big year
The Seattle Pacific women’s basketball team is having another fine season, but unless the Falcons win every game en route to the Division II national championship their numbers won’t match up to seasons past.
Make that the past three seasons combined.
Since Carli Smith Grant went from Valley Christian to SPU, the Falcons have gone 89-5 overall, 53-1 in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference, reaching the D-II championship game last spring.
This year SPU is 10-4, 4-1 in league.
“We didn’t start out as well, but we’re getting it together,” said Grant, who leads the league in rebounding at 8.6 to go with her 10.6 scoring average. “Now we’re really clicking … playing SPU basketball.”
It took a while to adjust since Julie van Beek replaced the ultra-successful Gordie Presnell, who moved on to Boise State, as head coach. Michelle Skyles, who was at Eastern Washington last year, is an assistant.
“It was definitely hard, especially with a new coach,” Grant said. “I’ve never had a female coach for basketball so I was kind of skeptical but she definitely was the right one” for SPU.
A new coach wasn’t the only adjustment for Grant, who got married last summer. You may remember her engagement the summer before, when Landon Grant, a basketball player at Montana State-Northern, proposed to her at center court during the Hoopfest slam dunk competition.
“In some aspects it’s a lot easier,” the new bride said. “We were long distance before so that was so hard. It’s great because I see him. It’s tough because there are a lot more roles at home … I can’t have oatmeal for dinner. He understands. He doesn’t expect me to make gourmet meals every night. Road trips are tough, I miss him, but we knew that was coming… . We work out a lot together.”
A sociology major, Smith wants to work with children – but not raise them in Seattle. The Grants may stay a while, though, because Landon works for an engineering firm in Bellevue and may attend graduate school at Washington.
But that’s down the road. Right now Smith is savoring her senior season and a “surreal” career.
“SPU has been an amazing experience,” she said. “Not only have I lost just nine games my whole career but I have had a wonderful experience. It’s been like the ultimate basketball experience.”
Grant was the first Falcon in 13 years to average a double-double last year (10.8 points, 10.1 rebounds), leading the league in rebounding and earning first-team all-league honors. She didn’t start as a sophomore but led the team and was fifth in the league in rebounding at 8.2.
Those are the kind of numbers that make Grant, a 2,000-point scorer in high school, wonder if she should have played up.
“I always wonder, starting back in high school,” she said. “I wonder if I would have gone to 4A and then gotten a scholarship to a bigger school. Then I think about the experience here and I know this is where God put me. I don’t think I would have had that same experience someplace else.”
Looking ahead
Everyone plays Thursday-Saturday.
Idaho (7-8, 3-1), after its first back-to-back wins of the season, faces the two undefeated WAC teams, Fresno State (11-4, 3-0) at home Thursday and at San Jose State (7-6, 2-0) Saturday.
Gonzaga (7-12, 2-2), which came up empty on its first West Coast Conference trip, is at (San Diego (6-10, 1-2) Thursday and San Francisco (5-11, 1-2) Saturday.
Washington State (6-10, 0-7) has lost eight straight, but the bottom of the Pac-10 is on the schedule, Oregon (10-6, 1-5) and Oregon State (7-7, 1-5).
Eastern Washington (6-7, 1-0) faces Idaho State (7-9, 1-1) and Weber State (7-8, 1-1) in key Big Sky games.
Looking around
Three local athletes are at Division II schools in Denver. University grad Emily Kuipers, a freshman at Regis, is averaging 8.8 minutes in 11 games, averaging 2.1 points. Becky House, a Regis junior from Gonzaga Prep, suffered a knee injury in the first game and is out for the year … Stacey Cox, a freshman from Ferris at Metro State in the same conference, started two league games and is averaging 11.9 points for the Roadrunners. In 13 games overall she is averaging 9.6 ppg.
Tip-ins
With Emily Faurholt averaging 19 points a game and Leilani Mitchell 19.3, Idaho has the highest scoring duo in the nation… . EWU is 1-6 when scoring less than 60 points, 7-1 when scoring more than 60.