Tony Bleill joins the Blue Star Media team in Chandler for the 2014 Nike Tournament of Champions. Tony has contributed extensively to BSM over the past several years and brings an extensive journalism background to our efforts this year. For more on Tony’s professional experience see his bio below and check back with Blue Star Media for our complete TOC coverage throughout the event.
CHANDLER, Ariz. – Few teams in the prestigious Joe Smith Division of the Nike Tournament of Champions faced as much uncertainty heading into the 18th annual event as St. Mary’s (Stockton, Calif.).
Coach Tom Gonsalves’ crew utilizes just one senior who plays significant minutes, and while the roster is deep with athletic and skilled players, it contains a bevy of underclassmen who lack the seasoning that many of the tournament’s other heavy-hitters can boast.
Through two rounds, the Rams have proven themselves worthy of continuing their winning legacy.
St. Mary’s pushed past another longtime California powerhouse, Long Beach Poly, for a 68-57 victory in the quarterfinals of the event’s premier bracket on Friday. It was one of the marquee games on a day that saw Mater Dei (Santa Ana, Calif.), Blackman (Murfreesboro, Tenn.) and Parkview (Lilburn, Ga.) advanced to Saturday’s semifinals. St. Mary’s faces Blackman at 4:40 p.m. while Mater Dei meets Parkview in the following game.
“That was a great team that we played,” Gonsalves said of the Jackrabbits, ranked third nationally in one preseason assessment. “I’m so proud of my players for sustaining that kind of intensity throughout the whole game.”
If Gonsalves needed any reassurance that his youngsters would be ready for the footlights that come with TOC competition, he found it early. Freshman Aquira DeCosta collected 18 of her game-high 19 rebounds in the first half, showing no timidity against Poly junior Eliza Matthews near the rim. Though DeCosta encountered foul trouble in the second half and finished with six points, she got plenty of help from her mates.
Junior guard Micole Cayton finished with 24 points and six rebounds, securing her team’s key points in both halves. St. Mary’s broke open a tight game late in the first half, as Cayton drilled a three-pointer and followed up with two free throws in the final 26 seconds, leading to a nine-point halftime cushion.
Poly barely threatened in the second half, only drawing as close as seven.
“Basically we were going to see how our freshmen were going to handle themselves, and they came through it,” said St. Mary’s junior Angel Johnson (seven points, 14 rebounds). “It’s a great experience for our younger players, to see the next level. They’re going to have to get after it these next few games.”
Poly bedeviled the Rams for much of the first half by darting through their fullcourt pressure for easy buckets. But St. Mary’s eventually backed off, played a stifling zone that forced Poly to work from the perimeter, and pulled away when the Jackrabbits struggled to find consistent offense.
“They had to hit shots consistently, and they didn’t do it,” Gonsalves said. “We wanted to shorten the court because they were spreading us out on our fullcourt press. We even shortened it up more than we ever have. We said, hey, if you can make a contested three on a regular basis, you deserve it. They’re not a great shooting team. I just didn’t want to give up easy buckets.”
Matthews finished with 20 points and 18 rebounds, but the latter number partly reflected her inefficiency around the basket. Pittsburgh recruit Tania Lamb had 13 points.
The game that followed didn’t feature the same amount of raw talent, but it provided an entertaining conclusion to the day’s quarterfinal round.
Parkview erased a game-long deficit in the final period, outscoring Millennium (Goodyear, Ariz.) 19-8 in the fourth quarter.
“One of our things is we’re deep enough to where we can play four quarters of a game, and we tend to wear people down,” coach Kirk Call said. “With (Millennium guard Raina Perez) going out of the game (for foul trouble), that really helped us a lot because we were able to pressure their other guards a little bit.”
Millennium withered under the pressure in the second half, surrendering 18 of their 25 turnovers after halftime. Consequently, the Tigers saw what seemed to be a comfortable margin evaporate. Parkview finished the game on a 16-6 run to secure the victory.
Vickie Harris, a 6-foot-2 senior post, had 21 points for the Panthers, and guard Dominique Leonidas added 10.
The victory had added significance because Parkview played without an ill Raven Johnson, the team’s second-leading scorer who sparked Thurday’s first-round victory against Cleveland High School (Seattle, Wash.).
“Tonight we overcame a lot of adversity because people look at us as underdogs, and we missed a big contributor tonight,” Harris said. “But everyone on our team picked up a part.”
Among the semifinalists, Parkview likely will be viewed as the upstart. But that’s fine with Call. He came to the TOC with an objective and it already appears to have been accomplished.
“When I came into this program it was a good program, a very good team, but they haven’t been challenged at this level,” he said. “And one of the things they told me when I came in was, ‘We want to play somebody.’”
On Saturday, they get a big-time “somebody”: Mater Dei, a consensus top-10 team nationally, led by Connecticut commit Katie Lou Samuelson. All Samuelson did on Thursday was hit 10 of 17 three-pointers en route to 41 points. She scored 34 points in Friday’s 59-44 victory against Fremont (Neb.).
“Golly, what’d she have, 60 today?” Call said. “It takes her a half-second to get a shot off and she usually knocks them down. And the rest of their team is solid. There’s nobody there you can pick on. But if we’re going to come out here and achieve the goals we wanted to achieve and prepare ourselves, there’s nobody better to play than one of the premier programs in the country.”
