Jared CohenIt was not long ago that Sydney Wiese was one of the top high school basketball prospects in Arizona coming out of Pinnacle High School. She has done nothing but exceed expectations since.
The last two seasons at Oregon State, Wiese has been an All-Pac 12 performer and is coming off a sophomore season in which she averaged 12.7 points and 5.6 assists per game starting all 32 contests as one of the leaders for the Beavers who won the Pac-12 and went on to the NCAA Tournament.
“To win a Pac-12 Championship with great people, great teammates and great coaches, we have a great support system up in Oregon,” said Wiese while working out at Pinnacle on Monday. “I am blessed to say that I learned so many lessons and I look forward to applying it to my junior year.”
The success has not stopped since the season wrapped up in March. Wiese went up to Colorado Springs and was part of the USA Basketball tryout for the Women’s USA team at the World University games. She was selected to be a part of the group that represents the USA in South Korea in July.
“It’s like a mini-olympics for college athletes and is going to be an awesome experience,” Wiese explained. “I never expected to make anything like this. It’s a blessing, it’s surreal sometimes. You don’t really work for stuff like this but it is the perk of playing the game and being dedicated to it.”
While the experience a head of her will an incredibly memory, the tryout itself was something that was huge in her development as a player.
“We scrimmaged a lot but it was with some of the top basketball players in the nation,” she mentioned. “Brianna Stewart from UConn, Mariah Jefferson from UConn, Diamond DeShields of Tennessee just to name a few of them and I have never played at such a high level with the best in the country.”
“I knew coming out of that weekend I was going to leave a better player with a better perspective,” she added. “That was my goal. And to know that I made the cut and made one of the teams, it’s awesome and I am just so blessed.”
It has been a remarkable run for Wiese and just another chapter in what has been a remarkable career which all started coming up playing in Phoenix.
“Did I ever expect to make the USA team or get all of these accolades? No I didn’t,” she stated. “I just enjoy playing the game, I have fun with it, I enjoy working hard and representing Arizona and whatever comes with it is awesome too.”
