ELLENSBURG (Feb. 10) -- A pair of career 1,000-point scorers, plus two others who totaled better than 950 points during their time at Central Washington University, lead a talented all-decade CWU men's basketball all-decade team for the decade from 2000-09.

The team was selected by 15th-year head coach Greg Sparling, who is the third-winningest coach in the history of the program with 250 career victories. All 12 members of the all-decade team have graduated from CWU or are in the final stages of their undergraduate studies

Three-year standout Lance Den Boer and two-year forward Justin Thompson highlight a talented 12-person squad that has seven career double-digit scorers. Den Boer was the 2006-07 Great Northwest Athletic Conference Co-Player of the Year and finished his career with nearly 1,600 points and with more made field goals, three-pointers, and free throws in the decade than any other Wildcat. A career 89.4 percent free throw shooter, Den Boer owns the school's career record for free throw percentage.

Thompson was a two-year starter at the beginning of the decade, totaling 1,046 points for an average of 19.7 points per game. He finished his career as a 51.8 percent shooter from the field and owns the top per-game rebounding average in the decade of the 2000s with an average of 6.7 rebounds per contest. Thompson was the leading scorer on Sparling's “team of the decade”, the 2000-01 squad that was the last CWU team to win a NCAA Division II postseason game when the Wildcats upset Seattle Pacific. That squad finished with an 18-10 overall record.

A total of five all-decade team players were on last year's 2008-09 squad that finished second in the GNAC and qualified for the postseason for the third time in four years. Included among those five were first-team all-conference players Jake Beitinger and Matt Penoncello, who joined Den Boer and Thompson as the only first-team all-league selections in the decade. Both Beitinger and Penoncello were 14 point-per-game scorers and transfers from Eastern Washington University. Other players from last year's squad on the all-decade team were forward Brandon Foote and four-year guards Colton Monti and Johnny Spevak. Monti and Spevak both played more than 100 games in their Wildcat careers and Spevak, a two-sport standout, was one of the top defenders in the decade with 132 steals -- more than any other player in the 2000s.

All-decade selections joining Thompson as having played early in the first decade of the century are Kyle Boast, Scott Freymond, Tyler Mitchell, and Chris Bannish. Boast and Mitchell were both four-year Wildcats who finished their careers as post players, including Boast, who had more rebounds (508) than any other player in the decade. Freymond and Bannish were backcourt mainstays during their CWU careers, with Freymond playing for three seasons and averaging 12.1 points per game. He also had more assists in the 2000s than any other Wildcat, dishing out 333 assists before pursuing a professional basketball career overseas. Bannish, currently in his fourth season as an assistant coach on Sparling's staff, was a two-year starter at point guard, scoring almost 14 points per game while shooting nearly 46 percent from three-point range and totaling 243 assists.

Ten of the 12 all-decade team players appeared in at least one NCAA Division II tournament during their careers as Central Washington posted a combined 157-112 men's basketball win-loss record (.584 winning percentage) between Jan. 1, 2000 and Dec. 31, 2009.

CENTRAL WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MEN'S BASKETBALL ALL-DECADE TEAM: 2000-09
Team of the Decade: 2000-01 (18-10; NCAA Division II tournament appearance; upset Seattle Pacific in NCAA first round; last team to win a NCAA tournament game)

Chris Bannish, 2004-06 (Menlo/Willapa Valley HS)
Jake Beitinger, 2007-09 (Port Orchard/South Kitsap HS)
Kyle Boast, 2001-05 (Spokane/Central Valley HS)
Lance Den Boer, 2004-07 (Sunnyside/Sunnyside Christian HS)
Brandon Foote, 2007-09 (Bellingham)
Scott Freymond, 2001-04 (Elma)
Nate Jackson, 2006-08 (Seattle/Cleveland HS)
Tyler Mitchell, 2000-04 (Everson/Nooksack Valley HS)
Colton Monti, 2005-09 (Lacey/North Thurston HS)
Matt Penoncello, 2007-09 (Moscow, Idaho)
Johnny Spevak, 2005-09 (Edgewood/Puyallup HS)
Justin Thompson, 2000-02 (Chehalis/W.F. West HS)