FORT WAYNE – Despite a difference in the number of options, making the cuts for the Indiana teams for the 19th annual Nancy Rehm Border Wars Classic might have been as difficult as ever Thursday for boys coach Kevin Leising and girls coach Dave Miller.

Leising paired his All-Star basketball team from 25 to 13, while Miller trimmed just four, going from 16 to the 12 that will represent Northeast Indiana on April 30 against Northwest Ohio at Saint Francis.

“We didn’t have a lot girls try out, which in some ways made it nice to work with in practices and tryouts,” said Miller, the girls coach at Concordia. “We could really take a really good look at all the girls. Even the girls who didn’t make it were good, and it still made it pretty tough to make cuts even though there weren’t a lot to cut.”

Leising, the boys coach at Bluffton, didn’t have as much of a challenge with the numbers but more with the quality of talent among those assembled Tuesday and Thursday.

“It is good when you have depth,” Leising said. “You could be really top heavy with four to five players, but if you have six to seven other guys who drop off a lot that could hurt you. There’s a really good mix from one to 13.”

Other than Mr. Basketball runner-up Nic Moore from Warsaw, the Indiana boys team lacks the star power but certainly makes up for it with its balance and talent. The boys team also includes Carroll’s Tyler Ault, North Side’s Antonio Wilson, Wayne’s Xavielle Brown and Snider’s Nick Lewis.

“We want to become a team because you have 13 distinct personalities that have to become a team,” Leising said. “I want to develop some sense of continuity with guys who were one of the best players on their teams. They have to learn to assimilate to different roles and sometimes that’s difficult.”

The girls team, led by two Class 2A state champions in Bishop Luers’ Brierra Young and Hilary Watts and the state’s leading scorer in Wabash’s Kaleigh Hensley (27 points per game), won’t be blessed with a lot of size.

“It’s not a big team by any stretch of the imagination, but I really like the 12 kids we’ve got,” Miller said. “We have a lot of kids who will really share the basketball, and that’s going to be very important. We want to push the ball, and we want to really get after them defensively. We are going to really work on the perimeter to defend well to make it tough for them to enter it into the post because we aren’t big in the post.”

Also on the roster will be regional champions in Canterbury’s Becky Pedro and Concordia’s Shauna Watson.

“I have the chance to coach against most of these girls over the course over the last 2 to 4 years,” Miller said. “I know a lot of them and have seen them play, so it is really going to be fun to work with them.”

gjones@jg.net