After Football, Great Hoops on Saturday
Say this for the Highland Park boys basketball program: The Scots aren’t afraid to take on anybody.
On Saturday, they will host Simeon Career Academy, a perennial powerhouse from Chicago that produced NBA standouts Derrick Rose and Jabari Parker, among others.
The game is part of the National Hoopfest, which will bring four games to Highland Park on Saturday matching traditional national powers against top teams from the Dallas area.
The HP-Simeon matchup (the Wolverines are unbeaten this year, by the way) will be the final game of a quadruple-header that begins at 2:30 p.m. with Creating Young Minds Academy against Sunrise Christian from Wichita, Kansas.
The middle two games are especially intriguing, with defending Class 6A state champion DeSoto facing Whitney Young Magnet School, also from Chicago, and defending Class 5A state champion Lancaster meeting Huntington Prep School from West Virginia.
The Scots (8-4) and Simeon likely will tip off sometime after 7 p.m. It will be the final tuneup for HP prior to the start of District 15-5A play on Dec. 20 against West Mesquite.
The National Hoopfest has hosted 10 showcase events around the country during the past six years. It has four stops this season, including two in Memphis and one in Tampa. Last year, organizers called HPISD officials about hosting a Dallas showcase.
“We’ll see some good high school basketball, for sure,” said HP head coach David Piehler. “It helps us because we’re going to play a really good team on Saturday and we start district that Tuesday.”
Tickets for all four games range from $15 to $25 each and are available online, or at the door until it’s sold out. No tickets will be sold for individual games.
