Liz Gentry was out of sight for a while, but her performance this winter is ensuring she’s no longer out of anyone’s mind.
Gentry sat out as a junior at Columbine, where she played her first couple seasons. Now at Arapahoe this year, the 6-foot-3 senior is averaging 20.8 points and 8.4 rebounds as a centerpiece on a Warriors team that’s aiming for another deep state tournament run.
While abstaining from the CHSAA season last year, Gentry was constantly in the gym, working with her club coach Derek Griffin to shore up the details of her game.
The result, she says, is that she came back to last summer’s club circuit a “completely different player” while seeing her offer list go from a few small schools to 27 Division I programs, several of them Power 5.
“We would go into the gym every single day and drill ball-handling, shooting, breaking down my game to the little details that I would try to perfect,” Gentry recalled. “He would get boys in and I would do one-on-ones with them. We worked on my fadeaway, which is my favorite shot now. Worked on outside perimeter shots, worked on pushing the ball up the court.
“It was everything you don’t have time to do when you’re playing in a high school season, because you’re playing games, or you’re at practice working on plays and team stuff. That time to work on skills was a blessing in disguise.”
The versatile forward ended up committing to Creighton in September, shortly after enrolling at Arapahoe.
She was cleared to play this winter due to CHSAA Bylaw 1800.42, which states “a student who has not participated in a practice/tryout, scrimmage, contest, or foundation game in a specific sport at any level (varsity, junior varsity, sophomore, and freshman) for 365 days shall have varsity eligibility at the receiving school in that specific sport.”
There were certainly hard feelings on both sides following Gentry’s departure from Columbine, where the Gentrys were a Rebels’ first family of sorts. Her brothers were All-Colorado selections in football there — JT Gentry went on to play at BYU, and 2019 Gold Helmet Award winner Andrew Gentry currently plays at Michigan — while her mom Susan is a Columbine alum who also taught at the school.
In sum, Liz Gentry did not want to play for the Rebels’ former coach, Greg Bolding. Gentry said the Rebels’ basketball philosophy under Bolding “didn’t fit my style of play.” So at the end of her sophomore year, she expressed her desire to transfer after the Columbine administration backed Bolding. The Rebels, who are currently tracking toward the playoffs with a sophomore-laden lineup, have since also entered a new chapter under the direction of first-year coach Keegan Bell.
“I still didn’t know where I was going to go (after my sophomore season), but I just knew that I wanted to transfer for my senior year,” Gentry said. “To do that (and be eligible), I knew I had to sit out my junior year.”
With the Warriors, she’s now paired up with another one of the state’s top players, junior shooting guard and CSU commit Gianna Smith.
The two are club teammates and were part of the starting lineup on the Hardwood Elite team that won the Adidas 17U 3Stripes Select Basketball Girls Circuit National Championship over the summer in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
That roster featured a who’s who of top Colorado girls hoops talent, including other Division I recruits in Valor Christian’s Quinn VanSickle and Rylie Beers, Cherokee Trail’s Damara Allen, and reigning Ms. Colorado Basketball and UCLA blue-chip commit Sienna Betts of Grandview.
“Liz and I have really great chemistry, considering our experience in club together and also going back to Liz playing for (Arapahoe) in summer league,” Smith said. “Now, we’re learning how to work through adversity together this season.”
The Warriors are coming off consecutive Final Four appearances, with last year’s showing highlighted by an All-Colorado performance from Smith. But to book another Denver Coliseum showing next month, the Warriors must find their late-season mojo.
Arapahoe (10-7) is ranked No. 17 in the latest Class 6A RPI, so they’ll likely need to win a couple road playoff games in order to get to the Great 8. Of the teams ranked above them, only six have played a tougher schedule based on opponents’ win percentage, but the Warriors haven’t been able to pull out any victories over elite opponents.
The in-state losses for coach Jerry Knafelc’s squad came at the hands of Regis Jesuit and Valor Christian, plus Cherry Creek, Grandview and Cherokee Trail in Centennial League play. All of those teams are considered title contenders, and the Warriors have hung tough in those losses but haven’t been able to finish.
“It’s about finding yourself through the storm, and I think we’ve made significant progress,” said Knafelc, in his 14th year as the Arapahoe girls head coach. “It’s time right now the last few games of the season to hunker down and trust and believe in one another. We’ve been so close (to some big wins) — it’s been a few possessions here, a few bad minutes of a quarter there and it was enough to cost us games against good teams.”
Arapahoe needs more than its dynamic duo of Gentry and Smith to win come tournament time. Sophomore guard Ava Budler, the team’s third-leading scorer, tore her ACL in last week’s defeat to Cherokee Trail. That means other role players, such as senior guards Emerson Stark and Foster Scheid, must elevate their play down the stretch.
Even with the setback of losing Budler, Gentry believes the Warriors are “super close” to putting it all together.
“We’re excited to get redemption against these (top) teams at some point down the line,” Gentry said. “I think we’re one of the most underestimated teams in the state right now. … We know how to battle from behind, and the fact we know how to grind as a team, that will only strengthen us in the end. It’s the perfect time of the season to get that overall chemistry to click.”
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