When Bonney Lake High girls basketball standout, and hard-working whirling dervish, senior, forward Carli Elwin graduated last summer the Lady Panther cagers lost a solid all-around player. The silver lining in that black and teal cloud is the Panthers’ coach Thomas Ostrander has done far more with far less.

Ostrander has displayed an uncanny knack for developing talent like nobody’s business and the great thing is he has a lot more skill to work with this season.

The Bonney Lake roster is sporting a diamond in the rough in its naturally gifted backcourt ace and senior, team captain, 5-foot-10-inch, point guard Naomi Pounds.

A last name familiar to BLHS girls basketball followers. Pounds is the younger, not little, sister of former Panther sharpshooting shaker and baker Marcel Pounds. The younger Pounds could prove to be a better all-around player when all factors are taken into consideration and that is exciting news if you’re a Bonney Lake fan.

When Marcel was on, she was a dead-eye Daisy Duke from downtown, 3-point territory, the only drawback to that was that her teammates often became too dependent on her accumulating half of the points and when she wasn’t finessing up the 3-pointers and shooting lights out, there was often widespread disarray and panic.

The good thing about Naomi is she is becoming more of a consummate and versatile team player. Not only is she is an accurate marksman from beyond the arch, but according to Ostrander, she is not afraid to drive the lane or dish off an assist or two.

Early on in the 2010-11 campaign, the Panthers who finished last season with a 10-10 overall mark and a 6-4 SPSL 3A record, lost one of their finest athletes, Mekenzkie Voellger, to a devastating, season-ending anterior cruciate ligament injury. The 5-10, junior forward is set to go for this year and the only one happier about that than her is Ostrander, who generally regards Voellger as being among the top three players on the BLHS contingent and at the very least a reliable starter.

“There are just so many things that Voellger does well and that detail allows us to be far more flexible in what we can do offensively and defensively on the basketball court,” said Ostrander, whose crew begins its league test hosting Auburn Mountainview in the Panther Den at 7 p.m. Jan. 3.