Bottom half of tourney bracket is loaded
with three of state's top five ranked teams

By SCOTT SANDSBERRY
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC

Somewhere, Kevin Mulligan is smiling. Robi Raab is keeping a stiff upper lip. Eric Rasmussen and Herm Van Weerdhuizen are thinking, Really? On Wednesday?

Those four men are the girls basketball coaches of, respectively, Chewelah, East Valley, King's and La Center, all of which are entering this week's Class 2A tournament at the SunDome with glittery records and plenty of possibilities.

But, as it invariably does, the draw has come into play. Chewelah (18-4) survived arguably the toughest district in the state -- from which only two teams from the perennially powerful Great Northern League could advance.

Now the Cougars, which boast possibly the best girls guard in the state in sophomore Nikki Nelson, find themselves in a quarterbracket with Steilacoom (18-4), Ridgefield (16-7) and Chimacum (11-12). All of those teams can play and deserve to be here ... but it would be a marked upset should any of them knock off Chewelah.

"We like our draw," Mulligan says diplomatically.

East Valley (22-1), meanwhile, won its first 22 games, then lost its CWAC district finale to Chelan after several Red Devils had missed practice time with a team-wide case of the flu. Then Raab found his team in a bracket presenting maybe the most difficult road to the title -- or even to a trophy game -- of anybody in the tournament.

"If you can play on Saturday coming out of our bracket," Raab says, "you've had a great tournament. And it doesn't matter what time of day Saturday you're playing. Even to get there would be an accomplishment."

This is what awaits the Devils at the Dome:

* An opener against Riverside (18-5), which boasts a future D-I center in 6-2 Angela Hartill (bound for the University of New Mexico), and, if they get by that ...

* A likely quarterfinal against Lynden Christian (21-3), which has a killer double-post lineup in 5-11 Kristin Berendsen and 6-4 Janelle Aupperlee, and, if they get by that ...

* A likely semifinal against King's (22-1), which most observers have marked as the team to beat. The Knights have arguably the 2A ranks' best all-around player in junior Sara Mosiman, who is listed as a guard but is really whatever Rasmussen needs her to be. A great guard, a great forward or a dominant post player.

"We've been blessed with some good ones to come through our program," Rasmussen says of King's, which has won nine state trophies and the 1997 state title. "But probably we haven't had anyone who compares with her from both the athletic standpoint and the skills standpoint."

Perhaps Rebecca Sherfey (1994), who went on to play at Gonzaga, could match Mosiman in skills, Rasmussen says; maybe Heather Reichmann (1997), who played at UW, was her athletic equal.

"But Mo really brings both of them," Rasmussen says. "She has kind of that inherent feel for the game, and from a ballhandling standpoint, really has improved her offensive game this year. She's one of the best passers we've maybe ever had -- and so gifted athletically, jumps well, good quickness, great hands."

Mosiman also averages 20.4 points per game. But in the Knights' opener against a very quick La Center squad (20-3), King's will have to deal with two girls who have each averaged even more than Mosiman -- Brittney Roggenkamp (22.0) and Tanya Baker (20.9).

Ridgefield coach Chad Dolven sings Baker's praises. "I don't hear a lot of people talking about her," he says. "I hear about the King's guard (Mosiman) and Nikki (Nelson) from Chewelah. But Baker is the real deal."

Van Weerdhuizen, who no doubt would have liked to have seen his La Center team draw someone besides King's in the first round, agrees with Dolven. "You find me someone who's got a bigger heart and is going to play there (at the SunDome)," he says, "and I'd like to meet her."

Baker banged a knee pretty badly against Ridgefield and has been seeing a physical therapist, but since there was apparently no ligament damage she is expected to be ready for the tournament.

That should also be the case for Chelan's stellar sophomore guard, Kristin Schramm, who sprained an ankle late in the district final against East Valley. An ankle injury was old news to Schramm, who lost the first half of the season after a stress fracture in her ankle. After her returned to the lineup in mid-January, the defending champion Goats (20-3) went undefeated the rest of their season.

"Her being gone actually put people in a position where they couldn't depend on her," Chelan coach Jeff Eller says. "It made us focus on how much we had to play as a team instead of relying on one person. For a while there, that pressure fell on Cassy Pilkinton, and our girls got into the habit of just passing to Cassy. But we got past that."

And the Goats are a much better team now for it.

"What's the saying, making lemonade out of lemons?" Eller says. "That's kind of what we did."