The Tournament of Champions December 27-30, 2005. The talent
will amaze you.
Going .500 in a tournament isn’t usually an achievement to be proud of.
But if the Gilroy girls basketball team can do that when they travel to Phoenix for the prestigious Nike Tournament of Champions II next week, head coach Kari Williams will be happy.
Why? The competition pretty much says it all. The tournament, an extension of the original Nike Tournament of Champions that brings together the best girls basketball teams in the nation, has attracted 20 teams from California, Arizona, Nevada, Tennessee and Virginia.
“It’s not about wins and losses,” Williams said. “We just need to get better.”
Which is what happened last year after Gilroy played in a similar tournament over winter break, the Nike San Marcos Hoopfest. At the tournament, Gilroy went 1-3. But when the Mustangs returned, they were more than prepared for the start of TCAL play. Williams is hoping the same will happen after playing in Phoenix. Gilroy suffered its first loss of the season to Burlingame last week at the Burlingame Invitational. The usually sharp-shooting Mustangs went cold against the tough and outsized Panthers, falling 64-31.
“We got off a ton of shots, all we could have asked for. We missed every shot,” Williams said. “We would have had to play well to be competitive. They ran the court on us.”
Gilroy’s first game in the Nike TOC II is against Tolleson (Ariz.) at 11am. The Wolverines’ star is junior forward Markisha Patterson, one of the state’s up-and-coming players.
Williams expects the competition to be the best Gilroy has faced this season.
“It’s expected to be as good or better than what we faced at Burlingame and that’s why we’re going there.”
At last year’s Hoopfest, Gilroy lost to North Torrance, another team the Mustangs could face again in the Nike TOC II.
“The teams (last year) were usually a lot bigger and quicker than we were and played a very uptempo game,” Williams said.
In addition to North Torrance, Williams expects Marin Catholic and Palos Verdes to be tough. According to tournament director Steve Kozaki, Bishop Gorman (Las Vegas), Lausanne (Memphis) and Salpointe (Tuscon, Ariz.) are the favorites.
This is the first time a second-session Nike TOC has been held. The original Nike TOC finished up Thursday, with the country’s No. 1 team, Christ the King (Queens, N.Y.), defeating the No. 2 team in nation, Collins Hill (Suwanee, Ga.) 79-75 in overtime. With talent like that attending the Nike TOC every year since its inception in 1997, the demand to play in the tournament has been high, which is why the Nike TOC II was created.
“There’s too many teams that want to play and not enough room,” Kozaki said. But the Nike TOC II gives more teams the opportunity to be associated with arguably the best high school girls’ basketball tournament there is.
“It has that sort of aura about it,” Kozaki said.
