It’s nothing new to Shaquala Williams and Jenny Mowe.
Williams and Mowe were both alternates on the 1999 USA Women’s World University Games Team, while Mowe was also on the gold-medal winning 1997 USA Junior World Championship team and the 1996 USA Junior World Championship Qualifying team.
So beginning Wednesday, the two most recognizable members of the Oregon women’s basketball team will be among the top 45 collegians trying out for the USA Basketball’s 2000 Jones Cup team. The 12-member squad competes in the R. William Jones Cup in Taiwan on July 16-20 and again against the USA Women’s Senior National team in Hawaii on Sept. 3.
Tryouts are beomg held in Colorado Springs and run through May 22.
“I’ll use it as an opportunity to measure myself,” said Williams, who became the Pacific-10 Conference’s youngest-ever Player of the Year last season. Shaq said she wants “to see where the other supposedly best players are — the other top collegians — and to gain some experience by being around really good coaches.”

Virginia Tech head coach Bonnie Henrickson takes the helm of this year’s team.
Five of Williams and Mowe’s Pac-10 counterparts also received invites: Oregon State’s Felicia Ragland, Washington’s Loree Payne, Stanford’s Carolyn Moos and UCLA’s Michelle Greco and Nicole Kaczmarski.
Three members of the national champion Connecticut women’s basketball team will also partake in the tryouts: Kelly Schumcher, Shea Ralph and Sue Bird.
But Williams is hardly daunted.
“You hear about them all year,” she said. “But I can’t really say they’re better than I am or I’m better than they are until I’ve gone head-to-head with them.
“Last year I really wanted to make the team, but it wouldn’t bother me if I didn’t. This year it’s something I’m really shooting for; it’s a goal. And whenever I set something as a goal, it becomes a priority.”
Besides, Williams explained, players do make friends during this annual best-of-the-best camps.
“This is my chance to see some of my friends who go to other schools,” the junior-to-be said. “We’ll get the opportunity to play together and do a little bit of that gossip that girls do.”
Not that they won’t be balling much of the time. Williams said that in the past, the morning sessions were filled with positional drills. Then participants play games in the afternoons and evenings.
“They wear you out there,” Mowe said.
Players are allotted a day or two to acclimate themselves to a new setting before the selection committee arrives to observe them on the third day.
Williams averaged 17.7 points and 4.3 assists per game last season. Mowe, a senior next season, came up with more than two blocks per game and 5.7 rebounds.