Local basketball fans are in for a treat when Harbour Breeze entertain Waikato Wizards in a Women’s Basketball Championship (WBC) game on Saturday May 26th.

 The game, to be played at AUT Sports Centre (tip-off 6pm), features not only  

Wizards teenage sensation Charlisse Leger-Walker; the youngest player ever to play for the NZ senior women’s team but also some returning college players in the Breeze lineup.

Leger-Walker was of course a key player for the Tall Ferns last month as they picked up a bronze medal at the Commonwealth Games.

The Breeze are strengthened by the inclusion of a couple of players returning from stints at American colleges - Brooke Blair and Katie Diakhaby.

Former Rangitoto College standout Blair, a Tall Fern in 2016, averaged 13.2 points per game for Idaho State University in the 2018 season helping the Bengals to the final-four of the Big Sky Conference play-offs. Blair was a Tall Fern in 2016 and will be hoping to impress the New Zealand selectors during the remainder of the WBC season.

Diakhaby has just returned from a two-year spell at Northeastern Junior College where she put up the sort of numbers we were familiar with in her senior year at Orewa College. Diakhaby was named on the All-Region Team after averaging 17.8 points and 11.2 rebounds per game for Northeastern.

Also suiting for the Breeze will be Carmel College guard Tayla Dalton who played impressively in the opening three rounds of the WBC averaging 12.7 points per game. Dalton played alongside Leger-Walker at the U16 FIBA Asia Cup in India in 2017 but on Saturday the pair will go head-to-head in the battle to secure backcourt domination.

Jazz Kailahi-Fulu is another young player with junior international experience. The St Mary’s College forward averaged 7.3 points and 6.6 rebounds per game for the New Zealand U16 team last year.

The Breeze will be hoping Waikato guard Alyssa Hirawani doesn’t replicate the form she displayed last Saturday in the win against Tauranga City Coasters. The 2016 Junior Tall Fern connected with 7 of her 11 (63%) three-point attempts as she amassed 48 points. The total is a single game record for the Wizards.

Waikato, unbeaten in their first four games, heads the WBC table whilst Harbour sit mid table with a 1 win, 2 loss record.