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| Published January 19, 2003 :: Home |
Inaugural Shootout Offers Plenty of Excitement -- and Likely a Record
By
ROGER UNDERWOOD But not only will Monday's Tourneytown.com Shootout be the first such basketball competition -- one created showcase some of the state's best teams and players on Martin Luther King Day -- it might well crown a new state career scoring leader. Sunnyside Christian's Lance Den Boer, the leader of the No. 1-ranked Class B team in the state, needs only 12 points to surpass the 2,477 of Curlew's Jeremy Groth. He will get an opportunity to do so during the Knights' Greater Columbia B League game against Riverside Christian, scheduled for 5:30 p.m., and one of six games to be played in the one-day affair in the Yakima Valley SunDome. "What a tremendous opportunity to coach a kid like Lance," said Knights coach Dean Wagenaar. "We've tried not to concentrate on that, because we'd lose the focus of our team. But his teammates have been excited about it, too, thinking that they've gone to practice every day with a kid like that, who hopefully did more than just break that record." Den Boer already has. Last season, for example, he led Sunnyside Christian to the Class B state championship and was named the state's Class B Player of the Year for his efforts. He will continue his hoops career at Washington State. The Tourneytown.com Shootout, sponsored by the Yakima Herald-Republic in conjunction with the Central Washington Fair Association and Greater Yakima Sports Association, will also feature the Class 1A Player of the Year, David Pendergraft of unbeaten and No. 1-ranked Brewster. The 6-foot-5 standout is headed for Gonzaga University. No. 7 Granger and All-Stater Chris Cardenas will oppose the Bears at 2 p.m. Riverside Christian's girls, ranked No. 8 in The Seattle Times' Class B poll, will encounter Sunnyside Christian in a Greater Columbia B contest at 3:45 p.m. And following the Sunnyside Christian-Riverside Christian boys, a rapidly improving West Valley team, ranked No. 10 among the state's Class 3A teams and winners of six straight, will take on a a very good Bellingham squad at 7:30. The Toppenish and Granger girls open the Shootout Monday morning at 10:30, followed by the Toppenish and Burbank boys at 12:15 p.m. For Sunnyside Christian's boys, the task above and beyond the aforementioned scoring record is defending their state title. "We've pretty much gotten our team back together after some injuries and suspensions," Wagenaar said. "We're starting to get some chemistry back. It'll still take a couple of weeks to find our identity." Granger boys coach David Gibb, on the other hand, will have little trouble identifying people from Brewster. He grew up there, played there and his parents still live in the north-central Washington community. "It means a little more with me coming from there," said the third-year coach who has guided the Spartans to Class 1A state tournament berths in each of his first two seasons at Granger. "Any time you get an opportunity to play a team of that caliber, you try to take advantage of it." Brewster, which placed fourth in last year's Class 1A tourney despite Pendergraft's absence (broken hand), has continued to excel despite more personnel problems. Tyler Evans, a 6-6 center, and Mac Gebbers, a 6-0 point guard, have been suspended for violating the school's athletic code, coach Tim Taylor reported, and Pendergraft missed Friday night's win over Lake Roosevelt after receiving two technical fouls and being ejected from the previous game. "He'd gotten one T," Taylor said, "then later in the game he missed a dunk and the official ruled that he hung on the rim too long. So he got another technical, which meant he was ejected and couldn't play the next game." In Gebbers' absence, Taylor's son Michael, a 6-2 freshman, has played well, averaging about 10 points a game. "He's real calm and he sees the floor well," said Tim Taylor, himself a Class 1A standout at South Bend and later a star at the University of Puget Sound. "The kids keep coming through, even with all the various things that have happened. With what they went through last year, I guess they're used to it." Evans and Gebbers, he said, will be reinstated on or near Feb. 1. "One of these days," Taylor mused, "we'll be at full strength." Riverside Christian girls coach Rick Van Beek said he was somewhat reluctant to give up home-court advantage for a league game -- RC has already beaten Sunnyside Christian in Sunnyside -- but that the positives of playing in the Shootout far outweighed the negatives. "We're certainly happy to get a chance to play in an environment that resembles where you play at state (in Spokane)," Van Beek said. "And we're excited about the event. We think it's great for the community and it gives some kids some great exposure." Not to mention competition, which West Valley boys coach Jim Berndt has looked forward to. "We've played against Bellingham the last two summers," he said. "They've been pretty strong and they're picked to win their league this year. They're real athletic." Brandon Foote and Toby Seim, both 6-3, have averaged 13.4 and 13.2 points a game, respectively, and 6-1 Tim Sellereit has scored 10.4. But West Valley has played strongly since dropping its Mid-Valley League opener at home, 60-59, to Hanford. "I think we're on the upswing a little bit," Berndt said. "We had some rough timing for that first league game. We hadn't played in two weeks and we had a kid (Adam Jackson) who hadn't played all year." Jackson had been
sidelined with a stress fracture in his right leg. But he's since blended
with 6-8 junior Andrew Strait and others among the Rams' tall and talented
roster to help West Valley decisively defeat Mid-Valley contenders
Ellensburg and Selah -- both on the road.
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