Wiesbaden hosts high school basketball championships
KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — Europe’s long-running high school basketball tournaments move to a new home Wednesday, when the Wiesbaden community takes over from Mannheim, where the vast majority of the previous 61 boys’ and 36 girls’ tournaments were held.
Despite the changes in location brought about by the closure last summer of the Mannheim community, there’ll be numerous points of continuity when the tournament tips off at the Wiesbaden Army Air Field gym, Wiesbaden high school, McCully Barracks in Wackernheim and the Polizei school gym in Mainz-Kastel at 8 a.m. Wednesday.
Boys’ and girls’ teams from 29 schools that participate in regular-season regional play will be joined by remote-site schools Ankara, Bahrain, Incirlik and Lajes in the four-day event, which on Saturday will crown boys’ and girls’ champions in Divisions I, II, and III. The International School of Florence, which participates in Region IV during the regular season, has elected to sit out Europeans this year.
As was the case last year, the large number of D-II schools, 15, requires a single-elimination bracket format after Wednesday’s opening round. The other two divisions are grouped into two pools, with crossover semifinals scheduled for Friday. The title games will be played at Wiesbaden Army Air Field, beginning at noon Saturday.
Two teams, both defending champions and top-seeded this year, enter the tournaments undefeated. D-I champ Heidelberg and D-III champ Rota will be back to defend their titles riding long winning streaks.
Heidelberg, which has won the D-I tournament or its equivalent 18 times since 1950, has gone 14-0 in its second season under coach Ron Merriwether and has won its last 21 regularly scheduled games. Heidelberg lost a pool game to Rota in December’s Patch Winter Tournament, but came back to down Rota 34-33 in that event’s title game.
More than any other figure on the floor this week, Merriwether personifies the European tournament. He played for Giessen squads, which won the Small Schools titles in 1987 and 1988 and coached that school to European crowns in 2006 and 2007 before Giessen closed its doors. He added the D-I title to his collection last February.
Challenging Heidelberg’s boys will be third-seeded Ramstein (11-2), which ended Heidelberg’s seven-year run atop D-I in 2009 and repeated in 2010, and No. 2 Patch (11-3), which played the Lions closely in two losses this season. The Division I tournament begins Thursday.
The other unbeaten champion is Rota, which is currently in its third unbeaten regularly scheduled season against DODDS-Europe schools. Rota last lost an official game in February of 2009, when Sigonella prevailed in the title game of defunct Division IV, 53-43.
Bamberg is seeded second this season in D-III.
The boys’ defending D-II champ is Hohenfels, but the Tigers got off to an 0-8 start and are seeded seventh this season. AFNORTH earned the No. 1 seed, with Naples and Baumholder ranked 2-3, respectively.
Patch, Vicenza and Menwith Hill are the reigning girls’ champions, with Patch’s Lady Panthers the lone favorites to repeat, according to the seeding committee.
Patch, however, has plenty of challengers in No. 2 Ramstein; No. 3 Heidelberg, the only team to defeat Patch this season, and No. 4 Kaiserslautern. Each of them posted double-digits in the win column this season.
In Division II, SHAPE (13-1) earned the top seed in its return to D-II. No. 2 Naples and No. 3 AFNORTH, the only team to beat SHAPE this season are the main obstacles for SHAPE, which dropped to D-II after playing D-I in volleyball last fall.
Rota’s girls drew the No. 1 spot in D-III, followed by Bamberg and No. 3 Brussels, the only DODDS team to defeat Rota this season. Sigonella’s girls, who went 9-3 against mostly D-II schools in Italy, is No. 4.
Play begins at all venues at 8 a.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Saturday’s consolation games tip-off at 9 a.m.; with title games starting at noon.
