NetScouts Basketball will be participating in a series of tournaments in China for both Men and Women. The tournaments are generally a round robin format in which we organize a USA All-Star team and play a Chinese team and teams from two other countries in three different Chinese cities. In this format all teams will play nine games. All the players on our teams have gone on to play professionally all over the world.
The next tour will take place from May 1-15, 2013. Our Women’s USA All-Star Team will face the national teams of Australia, Brazil and China in a nine-game, three-city tour. The roster for the trip is Meagan Fulps (Santa Clara), Jacqui Kalin (Northern Iowa), Jamie Russell (Illinois State), Adrian Ritchie and Stephanie Sension (Green Bay), Lauren Oosdyke (Northern Colorado), Kate Thompson (Michigan), Sam Ostarello (Purdue), Samantha Heck (Evansville) and Morgan Johnson (Iowa). You can follow the tours through articles on the blog portion of this website.
We have one upcoming Men’s tours and one additional Women’s tour coming up. The Men’s event will be the “World University Four Nations Challenge” (June 7-19). The Women’s event will be a series of games against the China National “B” Team from June 18-July 3. We’ll post the rosters for the events once they are finalized.
In May, 2012 our USA All-Star team battled the National B” teams of China, Australia and New Zealand. We took home the gold medal with an 8-1 record with the only loss to China by 2 points. We defeated the China National “B” team by 10 points in the last game.
The roster for that All-Star team was: Katie Bussey (Montana State), Casey Garrison (Missouri State), Rebekah Gardner (UCLA), Jasmin Holliday (Oregon), Nicky Day (Portland), Rachael Hackbarth (Drake), Talisa Rhea (Seattle U/Oregon State), ReZina TecleMariam (Portland), Kali Bennett (Arizona State) and Jalana Childs (Kansas State).
We returned to China from June 28 – July 10 with both a Men’s and a Women’s team. The Men’s team played teams from China, Lithuania and Germany in the same 3-city, 9-game round robin format. The team went 9-0 on the trip including a thrilling two-point win over China in the finale. The roster of the Men’s team was: Brian Addison (Buffalo/Portugal), Tyler Cain (South Dakota/Latvia), Lance Jeter (Nebraska/Holland), LaMarcus Reed (Texas-Arlington), Orion Outerbridge (Rhode Island), Lamonte Ulmer (Rhode Island/Luxembourg), Anthony Gurley (Massachusetts/New Zealand), Taj McCullough (Winthrop/D-League/Australia). Adam Waddell (Wyoming) and Marquis Jones (Rhode Island/Germany).
The Women played in the Sino-American Pre-Olympic Challenge against the Chinese Olympic team. They lost the three games against Team China, the last by only five points. They then defeated the Chinese National “B” team in two of three games in a second city. All the games against Team China were televised throughout China to over one billion people, as well as on some USA cable networks, on CCTV-Channel 5, the ESPN of China.
Our Assistant Coach for the event, Ryan Johnson of Northern Colorado, with the help of the Northern Colorado video department, produced this video of the most recent China tour. Included are dozens of pictures of the trip.
The women’s roster was: Katie Bussey (Montana State), Dawn Evans (James Madison/Connecticut Sun), Ashley Corral (USC/Seattle Storm), Jence Rhoads (Vanderbilt/Iceland), Brittany Carter (Memphis/Connecticut Sun), Becky Burke (Louisville), Briana Gilbreath (USC/Washington Mystics), Amanda Johnson (Oregon), Kristina Santiago (Cal Poly), Cierra Bravard (Florida State/San Antonio Silver Stars), Becca Tobin (Arizona State/Romania) and Kali Bennett (Arizona State).
Casey Garrison was mobbed!
All the tournaments is China are well-run and feature opening ceremonies with speakers and performers. They are held in arenas with a capacity of 5,000 to 10,000 which are mostly filled to capacity, especially for the games involving China.
We will be returning in June with another Women’s team and later in the summer with a Men’s team. Check back for more details!
