HAMPTON, Va.—If you do the numbers it’s easy to see why the Georgia Pistols were excited over their Newport News Division Championship in the 2013 Boo Williams Nike Invitational. In its 25th year, the long running event has been and continues to be the standard bearer for girl’s non-scholastic basketball in the spring. Competing in eight separate divisions, 216 teams were on hand with players from 29 states and Canada making up the rosters. Competing on 29 different floors over three days, the sidelines were jammed with more recruiters than Trekkies at a Star Trek convention headlined by William Shatner himself.
The Pistols took bragging rights back to the Peach State by way of a 72 – 66 final round win over the Cy-Fair Nike Elite. Led by Douglasville, Georgia native and MVP Asia Durr, the eventual champs jumped out quickly on Rob Amboree’s squad from Texas. Just as they did in their semifinal win over the Tennessee Flight Cy-Fair found their stride and cut a substantial margin to just a 38 – 30 deficit at the half. The 5-10 Durr, one of the most dynamic and versatile backcourt players in the 2015 class, racked up 12 of her team high 25 before the break. While the final margin ultimately remained at eight, Cy-Fair cut the lead to just one with just over five minutes remaining and forced the Pistols to dig deep to hang on for the win. Leading the way in the loss for Cy-Fair was high flying and multi-talented Ariel Atkins of Duncanville, Texas. Held to just five first half points, the 5-10 junior guard exploded for 25 in the second period in an All-Tournament performance.
On their way to the finals the Pistols survived a down to the wire quarter final with Kelsey Mitchell and All-Ohio and a tight one point semifinal win over the New Jersey Demons. Durr’s performance was complimented junior Brianna Cummings of Lawrenceville, Georgia and fellow sophomore Ayanna Mitchell of Conyers, Georgia both who also received All-Tournament honors. The path to the finals for Cy-Fair entailed getting by Jordin Canada and the Cal Sparks in the quarters before engineering their comeback win over Flight in Sunday morning’s semifinal. Both Atkins and fellow Texas commit Brooke McCarty of League City, Texas received All-Tournament recognition.
Championship hardware in the Joe Smith Division went to Team Takeover led by Mikayla Venson of Arlington, Virginia and Lynee’ Belton from Clinton, Maryland.
Other Division Winners and championship scores were as follows
Pacific 16
New England Crusaders 58 All Ohio Red 45
Pat Williams 16
Below The Rim 50 Blues Juel 49
Marques Jackson 15-16
Philadelphia Belles 62 Boo Williams 59
Atlantic 15
Georgia Metros 56 Comets 27
Bob Myers 14
Minnesota Stars 37 North Tartan 35
Hampton 13
Comets 52 Boo Williams Richmond 46
The depth of talent on hand was evident with 17 of the current Blue Star top 25 in the 2014 class on hand. Ariel Atkins is holding down the number seven spot in the 2014 class and made a case for climbing the ladder before the summer is out. Currently Asia Durr is the second ranked player in the 2015 class by Blue Star Basketball. Check back with Blue Star Media Wednesday for some additional looks at many of the top performers in Hampton this weekend. We’ll feature several of the players mentioned above as well as some others who got their club season off on the right foot. On Friday Lisa Bodine will offer up her take on 10 young prospects that caught her eye over the past three days.
