Summer basketball

We drove to the city on Saturday and watched South Bay lose a close game to Mission Recreation Center, 66-71.

As expected, no current Stanford players were there, since the summer quarter doesn't start until tomorrow. The only Stanford rep was "Keesh", Markisha Coleman '07. South Bay was so short-handed they had to borrow a player from the other team (Gina Giomanetti) and also got Amber White and Mia Greco from the Bay City team, who had already played a full game half an hour earlier, to make up five. Amber White had been the high scorer in that prior game, but playing her second game of the day, she missed a lot of shots presumably from fatigue.

Even so, the five South Bay players kept at least ten on the Mission Rec side close, rarely trailing by more than 4 until the last quarter. One reason was Brittany Spears, a 2011 graduate of the University of Colorado and their all-time leading scorer, who ran up 36 points and a ton of rebounds. The other reason was that Mission Rec, despite being led by Toni Russell (USF '05) and playing together often, played very poorly.

Russell hasn't slowed down noticeably since being named the WCC 2002 Freshman of the Year and the 2004 Defender of the Year. She is still an adroit ball thief and an aggressive shooter. She was Mission Rec's top scorer, by far.

Keesh still has her sweet shot and scored a dozen or so points for South Bay. She too is an aggressive player, but had to hold back a bit — fouling out would have left South Bay with just four players.