Basketball Coach Lisa Stone Announces Third Recruiting Class
November 09, 2005 | Women's Basketball
Badger women's basketball coach Lisa Stone announced her third recruiting class at the University of Wisconsin in a live Web streamed news conference at the Kohl Center this afternoon. Four athletes have signed national letters of intent to attend Wisconsin and play basketball in the fall of 2006.
The signees are Mariah Dunham, a 6-1 guard from Watertown, Wis.; Teah Gant, a 5-10 guard from Oswego, Ill.; Sarah Ingison, a 5-7 point guard from Roseville, Minn., and Brittany Heins, a 6-2 post player from Postville, Iowa.
Dunham has shown her versatility by playing all positions in high school. According to her coach she can dribble and pass like a point guard, yet post up like a center. Dunham averaged 16.4 points and 10.4 rebounds per game as a junior with Watertown High School, which was eliminated from the postseason by DeForest in a sectional semifinal after reaching the Division 1 title game in 2004. She earned first-team Associated Press and Wisconsin Basketball Coaches Association all-state honors the last two seasons.
Dunham joins Caitlin Gibson (2005) and Jolene Anderson (2004) as recent AP all-staters that Wisconsin has signed. Dunham played AAU ball with Jefferson's Gibson with the Fastbreak team out of Fond du Lac, Wis. She recently helped her team to a second-place finish at the 2005 WIAA State volleyball championship.
Ingison, who attends Concordia Academy High School in Roseville, is regarded as an exceptional defensive player. As a junior at Concordia, she averaged 11 points, three rebounds, five assists and two steals per game. A starter since the ninth grade, she earned all-conference honors the past three years and was honorable mention all-state last year. Her team, the Minnesota Stars, won the Minnesota state AAU title in the 16-and-under division in May.
Heins shot 68 percent from the field, scored 25 points, 14.9 rebounds and had 4.2 steals per game through 12 games as a junior before tearing her right anterior cruciate ligament and meniscus last January. She returned to the court this past summer after going through surgery and rehabilitation. Heins was a second-team all-state choice in Class1A as a freshman, sophomore and junior despite the knee injury that cut short her junior season.
Gant averaged 19.5 points and 6.7 rebounds per game while earning Street and Smith honorable mention honors and Illinois Basketball Coaches third team all-state honors as a junior. Another member of the Chicago Hoops Express AAU team (along with five other Badgers-Akiya Alexander, Janese Banks, Danielle Ward, Shari' Welton, Jordan Wilson), Gant earned Suburban Prairie Conference Player of the Year honors three years, all-conference honors three years, and was the Aurora Beacon News Player of the Year in 2004 and 2005. She is a 2006 McDonald's All-American nominee.
