Women's Basketball: Four Sign with WVU
May 01, 2008 03:43 PM | General
May 1, 2008
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| Mike carey |
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia University women’s basketball coach Mike Carey today announced the addition of four Mountaineers who have signed their national letters of intent to play at WVU next season.
Giving the coach signatures are: Vanessa House (Fresno, Calif./Fresno City College), Kasonna Samms (Massapequa, N.Y./Monroe CC), Alexandra Sanabria (Miami, Fla./Okaloosa Walton JC) and Tracy Wittebolle (Ieper, Belgium/Antelope Valley JC).
House, a 5-7 guard, averaged 14.6 points, 5.9 assists, 5.1 rebounds and 2.8 steals per game in her two seasons at Fresno City College in Fresno, Calif. She also shot 43.8 percent from the field, was voted to the all-state team as a sophomore and was a two-time all-Central Valley Conference (CVC) selection.
House guided the Rams to a 35-3 record this past year, the school’s best record in program history. Fresno City College went onto a 10-0 league mark and the league title marked the first for the women’s basketball program since 2001.
She also scored 41 points, grabbed eight rebounds and dished out five assists in Fresno’s narrow semifinal loss to Mt. San Antonio College in the CVC tournament.
“Vanessa is a one-two combination guard who is very athletic,” Carey says. “She’s capable of scoring from the perimeter. She handles the ball well, can create opportunities for her teammates and can penetrate and score.”
Samms, (first name pronounced: Kuh-sew-nuh) a 6-0 perimeter player, averaged 6.9 points per game as a sophomore in 2006-07 at Monroe Community College in Rochester, N.Y. During her two seasons as a starter, the Tribunes were a combined 65-3 which included a national junior college title in 2006-07.
In high school at St. John the Baptist, Samms was an adidas All-American after averaging 12.3 points, 5.4 rebounds and 3.4 assists per game. She helped St. John to two Long Island championships. She was a two-time Catholic League all-Long Island performer and a two-time member of the all-Long Island team. She was named the MVP of the Long Island Catholic championship game her junior year and was an Empire State Games gold medalist. A member of the N.Y. State select team that faced the Chinese U18 junior national team, Samms was a Gameball Metro Top 50 player.
“Kasonna is very athletic,” Carey says. “She can penetrate and create her own shot and really brings a lot of athleticism to our perimeter play.”
Sanabria is a 5-9 combo guard that played the last two seasons at Okaloosa-Walton junior college where she garnered all-Panhandle conference accolades as a sophomore.
She averaged 7.4 points, 2.9 assists, 2.6 rebounds and 1.1 steals per game as a sophomore and 5.8 points as a freshman.
She helped the Lady Raiders to a 27-19 record during her two seasons.
“Alexandra is also a combination guard that really does a great job of creating off the dribble,” Carey says. “She can play multiple positions for us and that will help us with the different looks we’re going to show.”
Wittebolle (pronounced: Whitt-uh-BOWL-ay) is a 6-4 center with international experience that comes to WVU from Antelope Valley College in California. She has been the starting center for the Belgium U16-U20 teams from 2004-07.
This past year she helped Antelope Valley to a 21-13 record after averaging 10 points, seven rebounds and two blocks per contest. She scored 21 points and grabbed 11 rebounds in the conference tournament’s opening round victory against No. 16 Santa Monica. She followed that up with a 10-point, six rebound performance in the second round upset of No. 1 Range Coast.
In 2007, Wittebolle guided the U20 Belgium National Team finished fifth in the World Championships.
“Tracy is a post with excellent size that can step out and shoot from the perimeter,” Carey adds. “She’s a great passer and has excellent ball-handling skills for someone her size. She’ll give us a dimension we haven’t had here in the past in a long while because she’s a post that can step out and shoot from the perimeter. That will help pull our opponents post players out allowing us to do more things around the basket.
“Overall, with losing so many players from this past year’s team we feel we’ve filled the positions with athletic combo players that should do great things for us. We addressed our needs in the post, yet we have some excellent shooters.
“The coaching staff, our returning players and the newcomers are all looking forward to the start of next season because there will be some great competitions in practice will be extremely competitive.”
The latest additions join the five student-athletes that signed with WVU this past fall. Takisha Granberry, a 2008 transfer from Virginia, sat out this past season in compliance with NCAA transfer rules. She will have one season of eligibility remaining next season.
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WVU's 2008-09 Recruits |
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| Name | Pos. | Ht. | Hometown | High School/JC |
| Madina Ali | F | 6-0 | Williamsport, Pa. | Daytona Beach CC |
| Jessica Capers | F | 6-1 | Gastonia, N.C. | Forest View |
| Donica Cosby | G | 5-7 | Coldwater, Miss. | NW Mississippi CC |
| Dominique Dixon | G | 5-8 | Detroit, Mich. | Renaissance |
| Takisha Granberry | G | 5-11 | Charlotte, N.C. | University of Virginia |
| Vanessa House | G | 5-7 | Fresno, Calif. | Fresno City College |
| Amanda Keehan | F | 6-1 | Cincinnati, Ohio | Oak Hills |
| Kasonna Samms | G | 6-0 | Massapequa, N.Y. | Monroe CC |
| Alexandra Sanabria | G | 5-9 | Miami, Fla. | Okaloosa-Walton JC |
| Tracy Wittebolle | C | 6-4 | Ieper, Belgium | Antelope Valley JC |
