Friday, February 23, 2001

By Rusty Bryan
Stars and Stripes

Michael Abrams / Stars and Stripes SHAPE's Benjamin Doyen goes past Mannheim's Shane Meloon for a lay-up during first-round action at the European basketball finals in Mannheim.

MANNHEIM, Germany — Some of the 36 teams vying for this year’s Division I, II and III high school basketball titles came from as far away as Iceland in the mid-Atlantic and Incirlik in Asia Minor.

But the Kaiserslautern boys came from just down the road — and out of left field — to crash into Friday’s Division I semifinal game.

K-town, seeded fifth out of six teams after going 4-6 in Division I games during the regular season, came to life during pool-play Thursday and stunned the top-seeded Lakenheath Lancers 61-60 in overtime.

The Red Raiders then downed fourth-seeded Wiesbaden 56-45, claiming the championship of the three-team pool.

No details of K-town’s victory over Wiesbaden were available at press time.

Against Lakenheath, Ryan Olds scored a game-high 20 points, blocked two shots and made four steals, and Stan Harris added 14 points, five assists, five rebounds and four steals. Robert Kindell added 10 points for the Red Raiders.

Dewayne Burns had 24 points for Lakenheath, but K-town kept the rest of the Lancers fairly well contained. They limited Lakenheath’s formidable center, Thomas Whinnett, for example, to 12 points and a paltry, by his standards, six rebounds.

K-town next will play against the runner-up from the other pool, which included Heidelberg, Ramstein and Würzburg.

The K-town girls were on the other end of the upset equation Thursday when sixth-seeded Wiesbaden knocked off the defending Europoean Division I champions 39-30.

Wiesbaden, which got 20 points and five steals from former SHAPE star Candice Crutchfield, outscored K-town 9-0 in the final three minutes.

Ramstein’s top-seeded girls barely evaded an even bigger upset, pulling out a 55-50 victory over fifth-seeded Lakenheath in overtime.

Tanya West, an All-Europe choice last season as a sophomore, had the best individual game of the day by any player with 30 points.

Ramstein’s boys were also victorious their first time out Thursday, bouncing sixth-seeded Würzburg 75-44 behind 20 points, eight rebounds, five steals and three assists by Tyrell Hibbler.

Division II

Michael Abrams / Stars and Stripes Joanna Miller of Patch, right, tries to get past Black Forest Academy's Betsy Branch during Patch's 48-24 win over the Falcons.

In the single-elimination Division II tournament, things went exactly as the seeding committee had predicted, with the top-seeded Bitburg boys, the second-seeded Patch boys and the No. 2 and 3 girls’ teams, Bitburg and Patch, all posting easy victories.

Bitburg’s defending European boys champions thumped Vilseck 73-33 behind 20 points, 24 rebounds and two blocked shots by Jason Robinson. Patch’s boys whacked AFNORTH 65-25.

Bitburg’s girls dumped AFNORTH 43-23, and Patch again kept pace with a 48-28 demolition of Black Forest Academy.

Mannheim’s boys, who got 20 points and 15 rebounds from Andre Nelson and 10 steals from Chris Evans, turned back SHAPE 68-62 in the other Division II game completed by press time.

Division III

Just because the Iceland girls don’t get to play in a regular Department of Defense Dependents Schools league, don’t make the mistake of thinking they lack the experience to deal with full-court pressure.

The Lady Vikings stepped into the Division III driver’s seat with an easy 41-28 victory over defending champion Baumholder and a hard-fought 38-29 victory over Italy champion Marymount.

Michael Abrams / Stars and Stripes AFNORTH's Adria Reznecheck tries to block Bitburg's Brittany Sanders during AFNORTH's 43-23 loss to the Barons in Division II action.

Marymount, whose senior Battistelli sisters, Stefania, Cristina and Francesca, had proved unsolvable on the press in the Lady Royals’ 42-35 victory over Turkey champion Ankara, posed no problems for the disciplined and talented Lady Vikings, who are used to tough competition.

"We won the hardest division," said Plummer said, referring to Iceland’s triumph in the Division III-North Regional last weekend at Alconbury against a couple of the best girls teams in Europe — Rota and London Central.

In boys play on Thursday, two-time defending champion Bad Kreuznach hurled down a powerful guantlet with 69-48 conquest of a strong Italy championship team from Vicenza.

The Bearkats did the job without All-Europe returnee Keith Walker, who watched this game in street clothes with a soft cast around the right wrist he injured last week at Alconbury.

Marchello Fields took up the slack with 25 points, but if Walker is to be believed, Fields won’t have to again.

"I’ll play tomorrow," Walker vowed.

High-scoring Dawayne Arrington had 20 points for Vicenza, but most of those came during the second half, when the Cougars were already down 33-16.

B.K. was to play Division II-South champion Hohenfels Tigers in Thursday’s late game. Hohenfels dumped Turkey champ Incirlik 67-52 earlier in the day.

Micah McDuffie, in an above-the-rim duel with Incirlik star Sascha Feskowitch, led the winners with 22 points, while Feskowitch countered with 29 points, including two on a thunderous crowd-pleasing dunk.

James Panui, enojoying less outside success than he’s used to, added 19 points for the winners.

Friday’s games will be played at just two sites — the Benjamin Franklin Village Sports Arena and the nearby Sullivan Barracks gym. Play begins at each venue at 10 a.m. and continues all day. Championship games are on tap for Saturday.

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