Vilseck's Jayslin Santellano drives against Wiesbaden's Katie Shea during a Jan. 17, 2025, game at Wiesbaden High School in Wiesbaden, Germany. (Matt Wagner/Stars and Stripes)

On the first day of tryouts, first-year Vilseck girls basketball coach Darci Neville told her players they were going to be underdogs.

The Falcons recorded a combined four wins over the previous two seasons, with just three coming against Division I competition.

And the last time the Vilseck program had won anything was back when the Falcons were in Division II when the team won the Division II-South regional title during the 2006-2007 campaign.

Vilseck will be looking to end that drought at the 2025 DODEA European girls basketball championships Wednesday through Saturday in Wiesbaden, Germany. And they have plenty of reason for optimism as the Division I tournament’s No. 3 seed, thanks to the Falcons’ doubling their win total from the previous two seasons.

“They know they can play with anybody out there,” Neville said. “We all know some days are better than others for everybody, but they know they can hang with anybody.”

Vilseck (8-6, 8-4) has proven that just days before the postseason.

The Falcons hosted top-seeded Stuttgart on Feb. 7-8, going 1-1 with a 38-33 victory on the Friday evening and losing 45-44 the next morning.

Neville pointed to a team mentality, lead by seniors Maria Bella Smith and Jayslin Santellano and sophomore sharpshooter Giselle Villarreal.

“They believe in each other, they work together really well,” the Vilseck coach said. “Our cheer is ‘family’ because that’s how it feels sometimes, that we’re a family.”

Ansbach's Kennedy Lange looks to shoot over Baumholder's Leai Vaisagote during a Jan. 24, 2025, contest at the Hall of Champions Physical Fitness Center in Baumholder, Germany. (Matt Wagner/Stars and Stripes)

The Falcons aren’t the only team seeking an elusive European title.

Ansbach has won a crown more recently (2016) than Vilseck and has made multiple title-game appearances since, including last year’s 34-23 loss to AFNORTH.

The Cougars (10-4, 10-2) have high hopes this will be their season. They start the tournament as the second seed behind Hohenfels (13-1, 9-1) and exacted some revenge on the Lions (9-3, 8-3) with a season sweep two weeks before the tournament.

Getting over the hump weighs heavily on their minds, though.

“They just haven’t been able to close the deal (in recent years),” said Shannon Daniels, who has lost five previous title-contest appearances with the boys as a head and assistant coach. “We would like to finally be able to bring that home since it’s been nine years.”

The Division III contenders have such contrasting styles. Hohenfels focuses on its guard play via the Jobity twins Malea and Jalissa and Anastasia Felix, specifically on the defensive end where turnovers are the key.

Ansbach, meanwhile, turns to its towers in the paint in junior Kennedy Lange and sophomore Elizabeth Agudzi-Addo. Daniels, though, warned against sleeping on the other Cougars.

“Everybody knows who our one or two threats are,” said Daniels, in its first year in charge of the girls team. “The other four girls have stepped up and are starting to be offensive threats.”

Unlike Vilseck and Ansbach, American Overseas School of Rome is used to be at the top, playing in the past two Division championship games. The Falcons won in 2023 but lost to Naples in 2024.

Many players, including 2024 all-tournament honorees Natalia DiMatteo and Silvia Goldman, are back. And those players have the Falcons soaring at 13-0, 11-0 this campaign.

Despite this success and entering at the No. 1 seed in Division II, coach Lillian Aldred said her players aren’t being complacent.

“It’s great to hear that coming out of the mouths of the veteran players,” Aldred said. “They’ve been there, they know what each day looks like. So, it’s more of a player-led team this year than we’ve ever had, that’s for sure.”

The Falcons, too, also understand how to handle adversity. In their 2024 semifinal against Vicenza, AOSR recovered from a 13-point halftime deficit to win after looking dead in the water for 16 minutes.

That story has passed through the team multiple times in recent weeks.

“The number of times that our captains have brought that game up to the rest of the team in the past week has been amazing,” Aldred said. “They’ve seen it happen. They believe that we can do hard things.”

AOSR’s Nina Neroni shoots between Naples’ Darcel Shine, left, and Anais Navidad in the girls Division II final at the DODEA-Europe basketball championships in Wiesbaden, Germany, Feb. 17, 2024. Naples beat AOSR 48-29 for the title. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)