Scout.com: Print This Story

HoopGurlz.com > Girls Hoops

Prospect Watch - Aug. 18

Courtney Collishaw

By Glenn Nelson
HoopGurlz Publisher
Aug 18, 2006

Sharp-shooter Courtney Collishaw's dream led her to verbal to her school of choice. Also notes on commitments and schools of interest on other prospects around the country.

STORY & PHOTOS BY GLENN NELSON

The place stole her heart during that summer between her eighth and ninth grade years. The players, the coaches, the tradition - it all seemed so magical. To play at the University of California at Santa Barbara seemed then to Courtney Collishaw "a dream," she now says.

Well, basketball is a place where dreams can come true, especially if you're as good as Collishaw is. During a visit last weekend to UCSB, three years after falling for the place during a basketball camp, a four-star guard, according to HoopGurlz.com, Collishaw give her verbal commitment to become a Gaucho.

Collishaw is one of the nation's top shooters

Collishaw, of Visalia, Calif., was good enough to have visited Oregon and been offered by Washington, but spurned the Pac-10 schools because she decided at the beginning of summer that she did not want to leave California for college. And then there was the thing with UCSB.

After the camp, Collishaw started attending games at the Thunderdome in Santa Barbara and took to idolizing Gaucho star Kristen Mann, who just finished her second season with Minnesota in the WNBA. With the school at the top of her wish list, Collishaw took an unofficial visit in June, before her club team, CenCal Elite, was to play a tournament on the UCSB campus. Coach Mark French and staff told her that she was on their list, though not necessarily at the top, but that they would follow her progress during the summer.

It didn't take long for Collishaw to impress. She had outstanding tournaments at End of the Trail in Oregon City and the Nike Summer Showcase in Chicago. During the mid-July break, the offer came from Santa Barbara, a program so storied, it has won 11 consecutive Big West titles.

"It was always kind of a dream to go there," Collishaw said. "By the start of this summer, it was the place I wanted to go." After another visit, mainly to answer some questions by her father, Tom, who played collegiately at Colgate, UCSB became the place she was going to go.

Collishaw also can attack the rim

In Collishaw, the Gauchos are getting a scorer deluxe who has one of the smoothest, sweetest long-distance stroke in the country. She also can put the ball on the floor, attack the basket without hesitancy, and finish in a number of ways, including mid-lane pull-ups or runners. At 5-foot-11, she has the size, and also the athleticism, to defend shooting guards and, like the entire CenCal squad, is adept at help defense. Collishaw says she is focusing on improving her ballhandling so she can play shooting guard at Santa Barbara.

Collishaw's stroke, she says, is a gift from her father. Except for about a week and a half rest after the exhausting July evaluation period, Collishaw says she is in the gym daily to shoot. She and her father also still work out every Saturday and Sunday for an hour and a half, using a regimen consisting of various shooting and ballhandling drills that he concocted.

Though conceding Tom Collishaw doesn't participate in the shooting drills and probably has lost some of his chops, the younger Collishaw says of the family shooting prowess, "I think I've passed him up."

Rim Shots

Natalie Novosel, a 6-foot guard-forward at Lexington Catholic High School in Lexington, Ken., had a good summer with the Tennessee Flight and is attracting a lot of college attention. The 2008 prospect has interest from Alabama, Duke, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisville, LSU and Miami (Fla.). ... Kelsey Ansley, a 6-foot-2 post out of Marble Falls, Texas, committed to New Mexico. Ansley can hit mid-range jumpers, but is far more effective with her back to the basket, especially when she has the upper hand on a matchup. Ansley also had offers from Texas Tech, TCU, SMU, Colorado State, Kansas and Colorado, her select team coach, Ricky Romero, told the Albuquerque Tribune. ... Oregon received a commitments from Nicole Canepa, a 6-5 post at St. Ignatius in San Francisco who played for the NorCal Elite select team, according to the Daily Emerald, the campus newspaper. The Ducks previously received a commitment in April from another California prospect, Tatianna Thomas, a strong, 5-10 guard at Hart In Newall, Calif., where she played with sharp-shooter Taylor Lilley, an incoming freshman at Oregon. Thomas played select ball for Finest Basketball Club (FBC).

Glenn Nelson is the publisher of HoopGurlz.com and the editor-in-chief of Scout Media (www.Scout.com), an online sports network and magazine-publishing company and subsidiary of Fox Interactive Media. Glenn also founded and coached the Dragons and Northwest HoopGurlz select girls basketball teams. He previously was a longtime, national-award-winning basketball columnist and writer for The Seattle Times. His work also has appeared in several national magazines and books. He is co-author of "Rising Stars: The Ten Best Players in the NBA" (Rosen Publishing, 2002). He can be reached at hoopgurlz@comcast.net.