With her team in a battle, Joslyn Tinkle converted two 3-point plays late in the game to lead Big Sky Hoops to a 48-40 win over the Mo Club in the Women's B division championship game at the 23rd annual Wayne Estes Memorial basketball tournament in Anaconda.
“We knew coming into this game that it wasn't going to be easy,” Tinkle, a Missoula Big Sky sophomore, said. “The other team was really scrappy and they weren't going to give us anything. We had to earn it.”
Anaconda freshman Lisa Laslovich drilled four 3-pointers en route to 14 points for the Mo Club, which featured six Lasloviches on the roster. Former Montana Lady Griz and Carroll College standout Amy Brooks also had 14 in the losing effort.
Big Sky Hoops, an AAU team that started last year, is an all-star team made up of players from all over Montana. Along with Tinkle, Hurley and Tilleman - who was Montana's Gatorade Player of the Year - Libby's Jackie Mee, Whitefish's Ashley Ferda, Dillon's Hayley Pettit, Anaconda's Torry Hill and Korey Krumm, Sidney's Jordan Sullivan, Big Timber's McKenzie Foster and Mary Anderson of Great Falls CMR make up the roster. The team is coached by Bill Hill, Lisa Tinkle and Tom Krumm.
“The goal of our AAU team is to get these girls more exposure,” Hill, also the tournament director, said. “They get a lot of experience, which will hopefully lead to more opportunities for Montana kids to play at the college level.”
Hill started the tournament in 1984, and was the director until the late 1990s. He took a few years off, but is now glad to be back in the saddle.
“We started this and called it the Montana State Basketball Championships for a couple of years, and later decided to change it to the Wayne Estes Memorial,” he said. “Wayne is a hero in Anaconda, and it's nice to remember his legacy in this way.”
A 1961 graduate of Anaconda High School, Estes attended Utah State University in Logan. During his senior season, Estes averaged nearly 33 points per game, good enough for second in the nation - just behind Miami's Rick Barry.
Estes was a lock to play in the NBA, as the Los Angeles Lakers had him pegged as a top pick in the 1965 draft.
On Feb. 8, 1965, Estes poured in 48 points against the Denver University, giving him the school's career scoring record with 2,001 points. Later that night, he and some friends were heading home and came across a car that had smashed into a utility pole. They went to see what had happened, but as Estes approached the wreck, his head brushed a dangling wire and was killed instantly. He was 21.
In 2005, on the 40th anniversary of his death, Utah State announced the school's All-Century team, and Estes was named the MVP.
So for the past 23 years, basketball junkies have flocked to Anaconda for the annual event. The tournament gives the town a much needed economic boost, with 100 teams spread out over five divisions - boys' high school, Men's B, 6-foot-1 and under, women's A and women's B. Hill has plans for as many as 120 teams, hopefully bolstering the men's open division in particular.
The tournament draws some of the best players from Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Utah, and this year was no different. Among them was former Griz star Kevin Criswell, who played for the Northwest Cougars, his old AAU team.
“This is a great tournament,” Criswell said. “It's very well organized and the payout is quite the incentive. The only other time I get to play is in city league, so it's nice to come here and play.
“The competition is pretty solid,” he added, “definitely the best in Montana for these types of tournaments. I like getting out there and seeing if I still have it.”
He does.
In the consolation semifinals, Criswell saved his team from elimination by scoring on a last-second layup to tie the score and send the game to overtime. They took over in the extra period and went on to play for third place later on Sunday.
Criswell, who last year led the Grizzlies to their first NCAA tournament win in 31 years, does miss suiting up for UM.
“I miss the competitive nature of the games,” he said. “You just can't duplicate that feeling.”
Playing with Criswell were ex-Grizzlies Matt Dlouhy and Brent Cummings, as well as Antonio Chavers and Ivory Clark from Washington State. The Cougars had a solid run this year, losing in the second round of the NCAA tournament to Vanderbilt.
The Women's A division wasn't lacking star-power, either. McKeon Law Firm, a team made up of ex-Lady Griz players made it to the final, but was defeated by a team based out of Bend, Ore. Former UM stars Katie Edwards, Jody McLeod and Julie Demming and current Missoula Sentinel girls' coach Karen Deden, a former standout at the University of Washington, fell 58-53.
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