Osan Pacificwide Holiday Basketball Tourney Day 3
Published: December 19, 2012
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So, what is Baylor University women’s basketball team’s all-time assists leader doing playing for the U.S. Army Garrison Yongsan Lady Rebels of South Korea?
Perhaps for the most elementary and patriotic reason of all: “Fighting for my country,” she said Wednesday after Angela Tisdale and just five other teammates held off the Camp Humphreys Lady Bulldogs 73-69 on Wednesday, Day 3 of the Osan Defenders’ Pacificwide Holiday Basketball Tournament.
The 27-year-old Army specialist from Austin, Texas, “out of the clear blue” decided to join the military last February after graduating from Baylor in 2008, then playing briefly for the WNBA’s Chicago Sky and four years for various overseas teams.
Part of Baylor’s NCAA tournament championship team in 2005, No. 1 on Baylor’s career assist list with 483, Tisdale brings “everything” to the table for a team that’s already rich in All-Service talent, coach Lavoris Tate said.
“She has assists, defense, leadership, a tremendous player,” Tate said of her addition to a lineup that includes All-Army guard Shameria Moore and All-Armed Forces guard Ebony Jackson, who each played small-college basketball in New Jersey.
When not on duty or practicing and playing ball, Tisdale says she’s taking the steps necessary to enter the world of the uniformed commissioned.
“I can go back and get my masters degree and maybe get into the officer program,” Tisdale said.
Not to mention perhaps earn a spot on the All-Army women’s team come spring.
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The team the Lady Rebels vanquished on Wednesday also possesses some cachet in the form of six players who’ve donned college uniforms, though not in the same class as the one that ran the table in Korea two seasons ago.
Still, they came out of pool play 2-1, clinching at least the No. 2 seed into the double-elimination playoffs which begin Friday in the 27th anniversary edition of this tournament, now sponsored by the Osan Defenders base teams after years of being sponsored by the base.
And both the Humphreys men’s and women’s teams have changed their uniform logo from the team’s mascot, the bulldog, to one that very closely resembles that of the Brooklyn Nets.
Adrian DeVillasee, the women’s coach the last three seasons, designed the logo and consulted with the men’s team’s coaching staff and “we agreed on it,” DeVillassee said.
“We wanted to do something different from the jersey patch we usually had,” DeVillassee said. “We wanted to change it up.”
The Nets have gnipped-gnopped between New York and New Jersey virtually since their birth as the New Jersey Americans in the late 1960s. They moved to Long Island, playing in Commack (Long Island Arena), West Hempstead (Island Garden) and Uniondale (Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum) before the American Basketball Association dissolved and the Nets were absorbed by the NBA and moved back to Jersey in 1976. They moved to Brooklyn just this season into the new Barclays Center.
Perhaps Brooklyn native Jay-Z will someday become a Humphreys fan.
