Washington's Guards are Up

This week's 4A tournament in Washington state could feature a showdown for the ages between four of the country's best high-school guards.

STORY & PHOTOS BY GLENN NELSON

On the long way out the door that is typical of the superstar constellation, Angie Bjorklund left her closest fans a parting gift. During her last home game for University High School in Spokane, Wash., the Tennessee-bound guard compiled a season-high 36 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists during a rout of Ferris. Bjorklund, the top-rated senior guard and No. 2 overall prospect in 2007, according to HoopGurlz.com, also left the game as the Greater Spokane League's all-time leading scorer, female or male, surpassing Adam Morrison, now a rookie in the NBA.

A couple of weeks later, Courtney Vandersloot led Kentwood to a triumph over Mount Tahoma that may constitute the signal pre-tournament victory of the season. Not only was this a clash of unbeatens, it was a district championship game. Seizing an opportunity to send her upcoming Washington State 4A tournament foes a message, the Gonzaga-bound Vandersloot posted one, giantic, neon here-I-come with a quadruple double - 31 points, 12 rebounds, 11 steals and 10 assists (also five blocks) during a 81-69 victory for the Conquerors, which are ranked No. 1 in HoopGurlz.com's Elite Eleven.

Angie Bjorklund

If this is what these luminary players do as prep work, imagine what magic might occur with something big actually on the line.

Well, as if on cue, the Basketball Gods seemingly plotted Bjorklund and Vandersloot on a collision course whose impact zone could very well be the Washington State 4A championship game on Saturday in Tacoma, Wash. University, riding the momentum of two straight victories over defending champion Lewis and Clark, was, many already are starting to argue, virtually deeded a spot in the championship game via a relatively quiet lower half of the bracket. Kentwood was deposited in the snake pit of top contenders that comprise the upper part of the bracket, but is considered powerful enough to emerge.

What delicious irony, not to mention basketball, should Bjorklund and University meet up with Vandersloot and Kentwood in one, final opportunity in the ulta-competitive seniors' quest to claim the one major prize that has eluded them both. It was during last year's tournament, after all, when Vandersloot staged an emphatic coming out, a party ruined in dramatic fashion by Bjorklund. Behind Vandersloot's 21 points, 14 rebounds and six assists, Kentwood was steaming toward an upset of University, only to have Bjorklund, who'd suffered through one 15-minute, 22-second span without a field goal, spearhead a comeback she punctuated with a catch-and-shoot three-pointer with 15 seconds to play.

The shot was so shocking and amazing at once that Steve Segadelli, the Woodinville coach, said, we'd bet only half-jokingly, that Bjorklund is "so good, she ought to forego her senior year."

She's back - they're both back - but theirs will not be an unfettered march to glory. Waiting for each in the brackets is a junior guard who'd probably prefer not to wait for a last chance next year to make her mark. In the top half, we'd be referring to Kristi Kingma of Jackson, who already is committed to Washington. In the bottom, there's Ashley Corral of Prairie, so widely considered one of the two couple point guards in the West, she'll certainly be one of the five or so most hotly recruited 2008 leads in the country.

Just as certainly, the ringside seats at the Tacoma Dome will be dotted with spectators donning sportswear in various, distinctive colors and emblazoned with all manner of

Ashley Corral

collegiate logos. Some will be babysitters - perhaps Pat Summitt for Bjorklund, June Daugherty for Kingma, Kelly Graves for Vandersloot - and some will be here for the fairly unique, four-day tournament format. But all will be there mostly because Washington has become a great place to help stock one's Division I backcourt and its the tournament to crown the champion of its highest classification has transformed into a veritable recruiting marketplace.

At least three other Division I point-guard prospects are in the field. Tabitha Tomlinson, a junior, is an excellent floor general, but has been pressed into scorer's duty for Puyallup. Another junior, Brittany Kennedy, is a speedster who wreaks havoc for defending champion Lewis and Clark. The other, Lindsey Moore, is just a sophomore and a teammate of Vandersloot's at Kentwood whose game bears an uncanny resemblance, down to the airborne passes in traffic.

Corral is the biggest uncommitted prize of the coming four-day event. Her father, Art, estimates that his 5-foot-8 daughter has received 35-40 Division I offers. Corral recently established six favorites - Cal, Notre Dame, Purdue, USC, Vanderbilt and Washington - with Arizona State, Kansas, Oregon and Oregon State still somewhere in the picture.

The Prairie junior long has been a wizard with the basketball, a master of no-look passes, dribbling flim-flam and teardrop finishes. She had been an offensive performer capable of putting up numbers, but far more a scorer than a shooter. Until this year, that is. Long hours in the gym has transformed her three-point stroke into a reliable weapson, making her not just one of the most exciting point guards in her class, nationally, but one of the most complete.

In a vein similar to Bjorklund and Vandersloot, Corral tuned up for the tournament by willing her team to victory in a double-overtime victory over rival Skyview in a district championship game during which she squeezed out 38 points, a record for perhaps the most storied girls basketball program in the state.

Kristi Kingma

Of course, there has been Kingma with whom Corral needed to keep up. Former club teammates with the Mill Creek Wolfpack (along with Eryn Jones of Meadowdale, now in the 3A classification), the two have had kind of a long-distance rivalry - Kingma living in Mill Creek, Wash., and Corral some 185 miles south in Vancouver. Kingma also had a breakout performance during last year's tournament, leading all scorers with 23 points per game, to Vandersloot's 22. However, as Bjorklund did to Vandersloot, Corral spoiled her old friend's coronation when Prairie dumped Jackson in the first round.

Corral is solid and speedy, but Kingma is explosive with a rail-like body type. At 5-9, she also was adept at penetration, using her special powers of contortion to twist around multiple defenders to finish, or used her springs and elastic leverage to launch three-pointers. She wisely developed an in-between game, avoiding much of the in-the-key punishment, and now has one of the best pull-up jump shots found anywhere.

While Corral is linked to Kingma and thus to Bjorklund because Bjorklund and Kingma were club teammates with the Spokane Stars, Vandersloot is not tethered to the other three in any similar way. Though its two-time MVP, Vandersloot's league, South Puget Sound, is not one of the region's traditional powers. She also played for a club team, the Puget Sound Flight, that has a good local reputation but doesn't often stray into the kind of stages on which Bjorklund, Kingma and, even, Corral have performed. Moreover, she quietly committed, earlier than some had hoped, to a program that doesn't yet share the luster of its men's counterpart.

Bjorklund, a gym rat and basketball devotee who keeps up on all levels of the sport, said she didn't know much about Vandersloot until last year's tournament.

"I thought, 'Wow, I didn't know that girl was so good,' " Bjorklund told HoopGurlz earlier this season.

Courtney Vandersloot

Vandersloot, in fact, has few peers on the high-school level. She uses dribble moves, explosion and change of direction to get into lane almost at will. Once there, she has good strength and hang time to finish and, most impressively, can locate open teammates and deliver them the ball without broadcasting her passes. If defenses soften to protect against penetration, Vandersloot is a pin-point shooter off the dribble and as far back as the three-point line. She pressures defenses from baseline to baseline, looking to make on-the-money, three-quarter-court passes off the break or transporting the ball upcourt without deliberation. Vandersloot's main weakness is that she doesn't suffer her own mistakes very well, that, on the other hand, a symptom of the competitive fire that rages within.

In that she has more than a kindred spirit in Bjorklund, who has every conceivable achievement - except a state title - and it is difficult to bet against a hungry superstar. Considered the best senior guard and No. 2 overall player in the country, Bjorklund is among the best to ever come out of Washington, joining the rare air of Sheila Lambert, formerly of Chief Sealth; Kate Starbird, formerly of Lakes, and Joyce Walker, both formerly and currently of Garfield, where she coaches the girls basketball team. All of them went on to success at the next level.

Bjorklund's technical mastery of the jump shot is well chronicled and will be on display on the high-school level just two more times after this week - at the McDonald's All-American Game in Louisville on March 28 and at the Women's Basketball Coaches Association all-star game in Cleveland on March 31. Before that, there will be four more days to conjure up some local magic. If the coming week is anything like the buildup, sunglasses may be required to better view all the offensive pyrotechnics.

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