Merry Christmas from the SVSJ! Today, examining the current college options for Mount Si girls’ hoopster Glazier

Good Friday morning and Merry Christmas from all of us at the SVSJ. We are not taking the holiday off today, instead, we are featuring some discussion this morning on Mount Si High School girls’ basketball player Lauren Glazier. Recent success on the Amateur Athletic Union club basketball circuit has resulted in a significant increase in interest from colleges looking to recruit her to their programs. The Wildcat junior has five scholarship offers currently to consider from various NCAA Division I schools, with three of those coming just in the past month – all from the Big West Conference schools we are examining here, along with Washington State University and the University of Montana, who were the first to make offers to her during the recruiting process earlier this fall.

We are taking a brief look at each of the five colleges that have tendered offers to Glazier, giving you an idea of the possibilities that exist for the Wildcat athlete if she decides to attend school at one of these programs. We start first with the University of California-San Diego.

UC San Diego: The Tritons are in their first year of play in NCAA Division I as members of the Big West Conference after long success as a Division II school; last season, the team finished 25-5 and would likely have been a contender for a D-II national title if it weren’t for the cancellation of the postseason due to COVID-19. The team is coached by Heidi VanDerveer, and if the name sounds familiar, it’s because her sister, legendary Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer, just became the winningest all-time head coach in women’s Division I college basketball, setting that mark just a couple of weeks ago. Tara has ties here to Washington, having coached at Eastern Washington University and also with the WNBA’s Seattle Storm.

San Diego is familiar territory for Glazier, as she with Mount Si competed in holiday tournaments in that city each of the past two seasons. So that familiarity with the landscape could be beneficial to her in her transition to young adulthood. Additionally, this year on the roster features Inglemoor HS alum Lucy Young, so the possibility exists she might get to team up with someone she perhaps is familiar with from up here.

UCSD has not started its season officially yet; they were set to open play on Monday and did get one half in against Cal Baptist but the game got scrubbed at halftime after COVID concerns surfaced with the Cal Baptist squad. They now will open play against Cal Poly on New Year’s Day.

Hawaii: The Warriors are part of the Big West also and finished 16-14 last season. They are 1-1 this year after splitting a pair with in-state Division II rivals Hawaii Pacific and Hawaii-Hilo and boast a roster where most of their post presence will have graduated by the time Glazier were to get there, so there’s a good chance she might see good minutes out of the gate as a freshman if she decided to play for them.

It is Hawaii, of course, the island of O’ahu to be specific, so the opportunity to go to school by day and spend most of the down time on the beach we expect will be very appealing to Glazier. Laura Beeman is the Hawaii head coach, and she has been with the program now in her ninth season.

The big drawback for any athlete who plays for Hawaii will be travel and its impact on academics, so Glazier will need to develop a strong work ethic and self-starter motivation in order to be successful with the Warriors both on the floor and in the classroom. With Glazier currently doing very well academically in her high school classes at Mount Si, and having to develop a lot of these traits during remote learning, we don’t anticipate this to be an issue for her were she to end up playing for them.

Hawaii also has another high-profile Valley athlete competing for them – baseball pitcher Aaron Davenport is a sophomore this fall and is a 2018 Cedarcrest HS grad from Duvall. Davenport is expected to be the Warriors’ ace hurler this coming spring, and with his experience in the Cape Cod League, could be a good bet for a Major League Baseball draft selection in the future.

One other thing that Glazier may need to consider is whether the school will be able to in coming years provide adequate support for women’s basketball, as the university may have to prioritize athletic funding to help support construction of a football stadium after their present one, the Aloha Bowl, was recently closed permanently and condemned following years of structural problems at the facility. There is supposed to be a new field ready in a couple of years, but the school will need to potentially construct a temporary field in the meantime. The program itself should remain active, but could face issues with funding while this stadium issue exists there.

UC Santa Barbara: The Gauchos, as they are called, are the third Big West school we are discussing today. The team has struggled out of the gate thus far, currently 0-4 to start the season after finishing 14-15 last season before the pandemic stopped everything short in March. As with Hawaii, post players will have graduated by the time Glazier gets there, so again, there’s a good bet of her getting playing time out of gate if she goes there. And like with Hawaii and even UC San Diego, with all of those campuses located in sunny oceanfront locales, the opportunity to spend down time on the beach will be an appealing factor.

The difference, though, with the California schools and Hawaii is the travel and that will be something Glazier will perhaps consider as part of her decision-making. Bonnie Henrickson is the head coach at Santa Barbara and is in her sixth season. She is a longtime Division I head coach, also with stops at Virginia Tech and Kansas, so this is a coach who very much knows the landscape and her stuff.

Their roster does not feature any Washington players on it, but currently has one from Australia.

Washington State: The Cougars have gotten 2020-21 off to a real good start, their best perhaps in years and years. The perennialy downtrodden Cougars are 4-1 and boast one of their best wins they’ve had in a long time, having beaten ranked Oregon State. They almost also beat Oregon earlier this week so this squad is certainly making waves.

And that’s a good thing, too, because this program has struggled mightily the past few years, with their last winning season being in 2014-15 under former coach June Daugherty. Last season, the team finished 11-20. Kamie Ethridge is now the team’s head coach, and is in her third season. It is WSU, so the opportunity to play at home – and likely in front of many of her friends from Mount Si who could attend school over there following their graduations – will certainly be an appealing factor for Glazier, but also the opportunity to play right away could be there too with again a lot of their post presence potentially being graduated by the time she gets there. It’s an international flavor to their roster this year, with players from Canada, Australia, Israel, Turkey, New Zealand, Estonia and even Rwanda on the squad.

Montana: The Grizzlies are 2-2 on the season after finishing 17-13 last season as one of the top teams in the Big Sky. The school is located in Missoula, in the western part of the state, which will make it fairly easy for her family to go see her play home games (the city is a several-hour drive east along I-90 from the Valley). But the biggest potential drawing card for Glazier with Montana isn’t even on campus yet. She is currently sitting in Colorado as a senior at Valor Christian High School outside of Denver. We’re of course talking about former Eastlake star Haley Huard, who is set to play for Valor this winter and who has signed with Montana for next season. An opportunity for Glazier to play with someone she battled hard the past couple of years in Kingco could be very appealing, but also appealing is that this is a program that is on the rise and becoming a bigger and bigger factor in a conference which has some solid women’s programs, such as those at Idaho, Montana State and Eastern Washington.

Mike Petrino is the head coach for Montana and is in his first season. Like VanDerveer at UCSD, Petrino has family coaching bloodlines – all in football. Two cousins, Paul and Bobby, are college head coaches. Paul coaches at Idaho while Bobby is currently at Missouri State, after high-profile stops with Louisville and Arkansas which sandwiched a brief foray into the NFL, as the coach of the Atlanta Falcons.

Where the Big West schools are all in warm-weather cities, Missoula gets very cold and a lot of snow in the winter, so if Glazier’s more a cold-weather person, this will be appealing for sure.

There will be plenty more colleges taking a look at Glazier as the AAU and high school schedules move through the new year, so while she has plenty of options now, it is expected that list will grow. If she has more offers to report, we’ll be sure to let you know here.