Triplets

[Chris Lang]

Big blowout story, coming in tomorrow's fishwrap. [/shameless plug]

[Sly Fox]

I told you to never by shy about the self-promotion. I look forward to seeing your ditty.

[thesportscritic]

Can't wait to see that story in the fishwrap tomorrow.

[PAmedic]

Three of a kind
Frazee sisters have foes seeing triple

By Chris Lang
Lynchburg News & Advance
December 14, 2005

Uh-oh. This is precisely the situation Virginia Tech women's basketball coach Beth Dunkenberger worried about.
"Just look at the second number on the jersey," she told her Hokies before they played Liberty last Saturday at Cassell Coliseum. Yet there they were, all three of them on the floor at once, nearly identical triplets, tall and lithe. The Hokies were a bit befuddled.

"We just kind of looked at each other like, 'uh, which one do you have?'" Hokies forward Kerri Gardin said. "It was very confusing."

Confusing, yes. Even Liberty coach Carey Green stumbled in practice Monday, calling Moriah "Molly" when it was really the other way around. But the Frazee triplets are much more than a cute little novelty act for the Flames.

Megan, the most well-rounded of the 18-year-old triplets, has the sort of game that makes power-conference coaches drool. That's not to say that Moriah and Molly don't have skills. While not as polished as their sister, they aren't exactly throw-ins, tagalongs who signed at LU because their sister did.

Thanks to some fortunate circumstances, Green was able to lure all three to Lynchburg from Xenia, Ohio, giving him a trio of versatile, 6-foot-plus swing players who each add unique elements to the Flames.

Megan is a threat to score 20-plus points every time she steps on the floor. Even during her turnover-riddled game at Virginia Tech Saturday, she still scored 20 points and pulled down 10 rebounds. She's averaging a team-leading 20.8 points and 10.3 rebounds per game this season.

During her senior year at Xenia High School, she averaged 30.7 points and 15.8 rebounds per game. She also averaged 4.2 assists per game, which dispels any notion that she's a selfish player.

"She's always been really good, but she's not a ballhog or anything like that," Molly said. "She's good to play with. She makes others look good, not just herself."

Moriah, who averaged 12.2 points and 7.7 rebounds per game as a Xenia senior, is more a defensive threat who aggressively crashes the boards. Molly, who at 6-2 is an inch shorter than her sisters, averaged 11.4 ppg at Xenia and "has always been the shooter out of us three," Megan said.

Actually, they all can shoot pretty well. Combined, the triplets have hit 12 of 15 3-point attempts this season.

Considering the girls were home schooled until they went to Xenia for their senior year, the numbers are eye-popping.

"You would never guess that they only played one year of organized basketball," Liberty assistant coach Kelley Deyo said.

The triplets first appeared on Liberty's recruiting list during the summer before their junior year in high school. They played on an AAU team coached by their father, Jim Frazee, and competed in the AAU national championships in the Hampton Roads area.

Green was immediately smitten with 15-year-old Megan's refined game.

"She was able to handle the ball," Green said. "She had a perimeter shot. She could drive. With her size, her ballhandling skills and her ability to shoot outside were exceptional."

The triplets remained on Liberty's radar and blissfully off of other schools' scopes during their home-schooled junior year. By the time they were seniors and began playing high school basketball, big schools started to take notice. Ohio State, for one, was in the mix. Most were interested in Megan more than the other two.

"She probably could have gone anywhere she wanted," Moriah said.

The size of school didn't really matter to the sisters, though. In fact, the choice came down to Liberty and Cedarville, an NAIA school in Ohio.

When the Frazees visited Liberty, Rachel Hammond, another recruit, was in Lynchburg on her campus visit. Hammond said she knew from the start that she wanted to play at LU, so Deyo used Hammond as another recruiting voice. Hammond's father James was Jim Frazee's basketball teammate in college.

Playing at a Christian school was the No. 1 priority for the Frazees. Staying together was another concern, though Green said they waffled on that one. Some schools wanted to offer just Megan a scholarship. Others wanted two of the three. Liberty had the advantage of having seven scholarships to offer, so Green could give three scholarships to the triplets and still fill other needs, like finding a point guard (Hammond) and a quick, physical forward (Rebecca Lightfoot).

Still, losing out on the triplets would have been a setback, Deyo conceded.

"If we didn't get them, we were going to have to start our recruiting process all over again, looking for post players, looking for guards," she said. "We had so much height with these girls. We put a lot of stock into these girls coming."

Hammond chatted with Megan often through e-mail and instant messages, prodding her to play for LU.

"They were thinking about going to Cedarville, but they have such a bigger platform here," Hammond said. "They can go a lot further and do a lot more (at LU). I kept telling them that it was a great basketball team and a great exciting campus."

National signing day passed, and LU did not receive a letter from Frazees, nor did anyone else. Stay close to home or come to Lynchburg together? That was the difficult decision.

It was made much less so when their older brother Zeb, a freshman basketball player at Kentucky Christian, said he'd transfer to LU. Jim and Tammy Frazee also decided to move south if their daughters wanted to go to Liberty.

So they came. And the elation could be heard from Lynchburg to Clearwater, Fla., Hammond's hometown.

"It was a real exciting day in our office when we found out they were going to come," Deyo said.

So far, the move has been a stirring success for the triplets. They live in the same dorm (but not in the same room), with other women's basketball players on Liberty's east campus. Instead of transitioning to college separately, they have each other to lean on.

"We've always been each other's best friends," Moriah said.

It looks that way on the court, too. They battle each other for playing time, but when they're all on the floor at the same time, there's a level of connect that cannot be denied. Saturday at Virginia Tech, Megan led a fast break and threaded a laser pass to Moriah underneath the basket for an easy bucket. Another time, Megan was double-teamed in the post and whipped a pass back outside to a wide-open Molly for a 3-pointer.

"Some people say we can kind of tell where each other is on the court," Megan said. "I think to some extent, that is true. We've played with each other our whole lives. The chemistry is kind of there."

That chemistry has spread, from one true family to an extended basketball family at Liberty.

Neither could be happier.

[PAmedic]

well written (as always), and the Hammond/Frazee connection is interesting.

[Chris Lang]

Here's a breakout box that ended up in the paper and didn't make it to the web site:

The Frazee file
NAMES: Megan, Moriah, Molly
POSITIONS: Megan and Molly are guard/forwards, Moriah is a forward
BORN: March 29, 1987
CAREY GREEN ON MEGAN: “She has tremendous passion for the game. She seeks perfection in all the areas.”
GREEN ON MORIAH: “Moriah is very strong and likes the inside game a little better. She’s got good speed as well. She likes to play physical inside.”
GREEN ON MOLLY: “Molly’s sort of a sly fox in one sense in that she is very intellectual. She has the physique and the stamina. She can outrun the other two. She can just run all day long. She’s developed a very good shooting touch.”
DISTINCT PERSONALITES: Megan says Moriah is the most talkative of the three; Moriah calls Molly intelligent and quietly funny; Molly says Megan is unselfish.
DID YOU KNOW?: Fairleigh thingyinson in New Jersey is the only other Division I school with triplets on its roster. Ashley, Lauren and Heather Coombs average a combined 2.1 points per game for FDU. The Frazee triplets average 31.5 ppg.

[bigsmooth]

i love coach green's "sly fox" reference on molly. how did ya get a mention from down there in texas??? ;D

[Sly Fox]

The power of the board is reaching further & gfurther into the athletic department. ;D

Seriously, there is no comparison between LU and Cedarville. And this comes from a man whose grandfather has been on Cedarville's board for decades and who has an uncle who is the head of the biology department. Nice school but in a completely different universe athletically. But in Xenia (best known for a killer tornade in the Mid '70s) Cedarville is the logical next step for Christian school kids.

[PAmedic]

my brother went there. I think they are the "Bees" or something. Much like Winthrop, MBB is the only thing they have to look forward to. I'll take the frustration of following our FB team over watching paint dry when there isn't a MBB game ANY DAY.

(now waiting for WEF and REALIST to log in and crush me!)