The American College basketball regular season swung into action last weekend with multiple games involving Harbour players.

On Sunday Brooke Blair emerged with the player of the week honours after scoring a career high 30 points, that included 6 from 9 threes, as Idaho State Bengals made it two from two with a 75-59 win against University of Washington. Idaho coach Seton Soboleweski said, “Brooke was on fire.”

48 hours earlier Brooke scored 16 points (3/5 3PG) as the Bengals beat Seattle Redhawks 74-69. Blair also nabbed a game high 3 steals to accompany 3 rebounds and 4 assists.

Amongst the men Matt Freeman enjoyed a fine opener as the Oklahoma Sooners beat Omaha – that’s the university not the beach - 108-89. Freeman had his perimeter shot going in this one landing all three of his efforts from deep and finishing with 13 points (5/6FG).

Centre Jack Salt played 29 minutes as Virginia beat UNC Greensboro 60-48 in their season opener. Salt finished with 6 points and 4 rebounds.

Denhym Brooke was in fine form for University of Hawaii at Hilo as they upset Western Washington, the defending Great Northwest Conference champions, 80-76 to start the season 1-1. The former Rangitoto College forward put together an impressive double-double of 14 points (4/6FG, 6/8FT) and 10 rebounds.

Point guard Isaac Letoa scored his first points for Dartmouth in a big win against Emerson (78-43). Letoa finished with a game high 6 assists to go with four points. Suspect that more assists than points could be a regular pattern for our most recent Tall Black.

Starting centre Alex Talma produced 7 points, 6 rebounds and a pair of blocks as Biola University Eagles went down 84-57 to San Marcos in their season opener.

Back to the women and Ella Fotu and Hawaii Pacific Sharks lost their opener to Alaska Ankorage (84-72) but bit back a couple of days later to defeat Central Washington 77-68. Fotu scored 8 points against Alaska and four points plus 5 boards and 5 assists against Central.

Tera Reed almost managed a double-double in her first outing for Virginia Commonwealth who went down 66-52 to Norfolk State. Reed finished with a highly creditable 9 points and 12 rebounds in 35 minutes of action.

Zara Jillings with a useful stat line of 4p/5r/1a/1st played 26 minutes on her regular season debut as Fordham University Rams accounted for UMBC 55-46.

Tiarna Clarke earned the wrath of the referees fouling out in 13 minutes with 3 points and 4 assists as University of Northern Colorado defeated top 25 touted DePaul 94-88 in one of the most significant wins in UNC’s history. The combo guard had 4 points and 3 rebounds in a second up win against Denver on debut.

Barry University had a win and a loss in their opening pair of games with Charlotte Armstrong comingoff the bench for the last couple of minutes in the 73-50 loss at Union University.

Former Orewa College standout Katie Diakhaby has had a pair of monster outings for Northeastern in Junior College action. Dikhaby dominated proceedings with 29 points and 12 rebounds in a 63-52 win against Colorado Springs and followed that with 21 points and 13 rebounds in a 76-56 loss to Casper College.

Also in Junior College action Georgia Perrott-Hunt scored 4 points and Olivia Bell landed 12 points (6/7FG) as North Dakota State College improved to 2-1 with a 76-50 win at Minnesota State College.