Elite divisions heat up

Stacy Clinesmith showed that there’s still life in the ex-WNBA basketball player’s legs.

There had to be, considering that Team Idaho took the longest possible route to the Elite Women’s Hoopfest title.

Lindsay Herbert got Team Idaho to the second game of the double-elimination tournament against GU Blackouts and Clinesmith, on an array of shots, took it from there.

On Center Court in Riverfront Park, where Sunday temperatures reached nearly 120 degrees, Team Idaho defeated GU Blackouts 20-13 and 20-19 for their seventh and eighth straight weekend victories.

“I’m getting too old for this,” said the 28-year-old former Mead and UC-Santa Barbara star, who played four years in the WNBA with Sacramento and Detroit. “I don’t know how we did it, I honestly don’t.”

Clinesmith had played on last year’s Hoopfest champion that included this year’s foes, Gonzaga University standouts Shannon Mathews and Raeanna Jewell.

They opted for an all Zags team this year – adding Anne Bailey and Ashley Anderson.

Clinesmith was picked up by Team Idaho, which included Herbert, the former Lake City and University of Utah all-conference player, Post Falls’ Megan Kane and her teammate at Carroll College, Emili Woody.

After losing their opener Saturday, things looked bleak. It was the first game in all of Clinesmith’s “seven or eight” Hoopfests, beginning in junior high that she’d ever lost.

“We were absolutely horrible,” said Clinesmith. “We were out of sync, out of rhythm, just getting to know each other. We were thinking we’d be out early.”

Then things clicked. They won three times in three hours Saturday, three more times between 10:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, then took on GU, beginning at 2:10 p.m.

The 5-foot-11 Herbert scored 11 points, including three 2-point baskets as Team Idaho went from a 6-5 deficit to a 10-6 lead en route to the comfortable first-game win.

Herbert wasn’t as much of a factor in the second game finishing with four points, but got the game winner as Team Idaho survived a scare.

“I was exhausted,” she said. “My legs felt like Jell-O and I tried to focus more on defense trying to stop their big girls and letting Stacey take over offensively.”

Clinesmith scored 10 points as Team Idaho built a 19-12 lead. The GU Blackouts tied it on two 2-point baskets by Matthews and another by Jewell.

But Herbert had one final burst of energy and took the ball to the basket to end it.

It was her third title since 2003 and maybe the best.

“I’d never been in the loser’s bracket before,” she said. “That makes it an even more sweet victory coming back that far.”