Heal Helps Broncos Find New Identity

Starting fast is nothing new for Santa Clara point guard Tess Heal, who has won the University Credit Union West Coast Conference Freshman of the Week award three times already this season. Yes, three times in three weeks.

She was this way as an 8-year-old just taking up basketball at home in Melbourne, Australia.

"I would say it was a pretty quick progression,” Heal says when asked how quickly she picked up the game. “My dad tells me the story of my first basketball game. It took me six seconds to score my first bucket. Right off the jump. It kind of came naturally.”

Ten years later and nearly 8,000 miles from home, it took her a bit longer to adjust. She needed two-and-a-half minutes to score her first basket for the Broncos on her way to putting up 28 points in the season opener against UC Santa Barbara.

Still 18 years old, Heal has scored in double digits in all eight Santa Clara games, and averages 17.4 points, 4.5 rebounds and 4.1 assists while shooting 54 percent from the field and 82 percent from the free throw line.

Coach Bill Carr says Heal provides a little bit of everything for the Broncos.

“Her toughness is off the charts,” Carr says. “She has a really, really high basketball IQ. She is ultra-competitive — has this burning desire to win. We love having her here. She’s been great.”

The winning is what has Heal most excited. The Broncos began the season just 2-3 but have won three in a row, including victories over 2022 Sweet 16 participant South Dakota and Washington last weekend at the Las Vegas Classic.

“It’s been awesome,” says Heal, who will help lead the Broncos against No. 2 Stanford on Wednesday night at Maples Pavilion.

The Broncos brought in four new players this season and welcomed back two others who missed all of last season due to injuries. As a result, Carr wasn’t quite sure what his team would look like.

“In the last two weeks I think everybody has exceeded my expectations,” he says. “Early on we didn’t know who we were. Quite frankly, we’re not who we’re going to be and that’s exciting. As a coach, on paper you think we’re going to be this or you’re going to be that, then you’ve got to live it.  We’re just getting to the start of that right now.”

That’s exactly how it seems to Heal, and it feeds her confidence the Broncos can strive for her No. 1 goal — to compete a spot in the NCAA Tournament.

“I don’t want to speak too optimistically but this team has progressed exponentially since we started,” she explains. “The wins we had on the weekend, if we have played those same teams three weeks ago, we would have lost by 20.”

Basketball is big in the Heal family. Her uncle, Shane Heal, was a four-time Australian Olympic team member, but her father, Travis, was her biggest influence as her coach most of her childhood. Older brother Douglas also played. 

“When you grow up around it,” Carr says, "it just seeps into your pores.”

Heal was barely into her teen years when she began to make a name on regional and national age-group teams. Two years ago, when she was 16, FIBA.com — the sport’s international body — published an article that projected Heal would be one of the top 10 women’s players in the world in 2030. UConn’s Paige Bueckers also was on the list.

“That was pretty incredible, pretty awesome,” she says. “I try not to read into those things too much. I try to focus on what I can do to get better.”

At that point, Heal still was two years away from achieving “a massive dream” of beginning a college career in the U.S. She chose Santa Clara over WCC rival San Francisco for a variety of reasons, but it didn’t hurt that she joined three fellow Melbourne natives — Lara Edmanson, Olivia Pollerd and Jayde Cadee — whom she already knew as past teammates or rivals.

When Heal was considering destinations some friends urged her to go someplace without an Australian flavor. “That’s rubbish,” she says. “It’s so nice having people familiar with home.”

Heal is super-proud of Melbourne as an Aussie basketball hotbed. The city of 5 million in the state of Victoria also provided the WCC with Gonzaga’s Eliza Hollingsworth, Lucy Cochrane and Tyler Robertson of Portland, LMU’s Keli Leaupepe and Josh Kunen of USF.

But the city’s hoops legacy goes much deeper: former Saint Mary’s star Jock Landale came from Melbourne and, before him, Luc Longley, Andrew Bogut, Andrew Gaze and Ben Simmons. And here’s something you may not know: Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving was born in Melbourne while his father was playing professionally Down Under.

Heal knew. “100 percent,” she says. “I’m definitely biased but Victoria is by far the best basketball state. We always have been.”

Things are just getting started for Heal, who this summer helped the Australian Under-18 National Team win the Asia Cup, qualifying them for the 2023 Under-19 World Cup in Madrid, Spain.

She aspires to represent Australia in the Olympics someday and hopes to follow her hoops idol Sue Bird to a career in the WNBA.

“I’ve always been a massive dreamer with massive goals,” she says. “That hasn’t changed.”

GAELS TO FACE FIRST NON-WCC NO. 1: Saint Mary’s (6-1) has played the nation’s No. 1-ranked team 13 times, with eight of those games vs. Gonzaga over the past 10 years. The Gaels’ matchup Saturday against unbeaten Houston (6:30 p.m. on ESPN2) in Fort Worth, Texas, will mark their first shot at a top-ranked opponent from outside the WCC.

The Cougars rose to the No. 1 spot in the AP Top-25 this week for the first time in nearly four decades, since the Phi Slamma Jama team featuring Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon. This Houston squad (7-0) is ferocious defensively and led by senior guard Marcus Sasser and 6-foot-8, 240-pound freshman Jarace Walker, who last year was rated the nation’s No. 1 power forward prospect by ESPN.

The Gaels are 2-11 all-time against No. 1 teams, beating Gonzaga last year and in the championship game of the 2019 WCC tournament. They are 2-6 vs. Zags’ teams sitting at No. 1 and 0-5 against USF teams atop the rankings, three of those defeats to squads powered by Bill Russell.

Before trekking to Texas, the Gaels put their 23-game home win streak on the line tonight against New Mexico (6-0), whose top players include the sons of former NBA players: Jamal Mashburn Jr. and Jaelen House, whose father Eddie played 11 seasons in the league.

ZAGS’ RED-HOT MAXWELL: The Gonzaga women (6-1) climbed into the Top-25 rankings this week at No. 23 and they celebrated with a 62-43 win over Maine on Monday night.

Guard Brynna Maxwell, a grad transfer from Utah where she made 194 3-point shots in three seasons, scored 13 points with a pair of 3’s against Maine. Maxwell has made at least one 3-pointer in every game this season and is converting 56.3 percent (18-for-32) from deep, to rank fourth in Division I.

Maxwell also has made 21 of 22 free throws for 95.5 percent, but USF’s Ionanna Krimili has the most made free throws in the country by any women’s player with just one miss, connecting on 28 of 29 for 96.6 percent.

HIGH PRAISE FROM TOM IZZO: Michigan State coach Tom Izzo came away with huge respect for Portland coach Shantay Legans’ team after the Spartans escaped the Phil Knight Invitational with a 78-77 victory over the Pilots in the tournament’s fifth-place game. 

“First let me say, really impressed with Portland. We were impressed with them on film,” Izzo said after the game. “They’ve got an exciting team, they play hard, they play well, they’re well-coached. They do a lot of good things. They can shoot the ball. 

“They’re fun to watch . . . not from the bench, but when I watched them on film, they were fun to watch. I think there’s a lot of positives there, which we knew would make our game a dogfight.”