In its 13th year, Monday’s Martin Luther King Basketball Classic at McKale Center has become the showcase for high school basketball in Southern Arizona.
Seven games will be played beginning at 11 a.m., when the girls teams from Tohono O’odham and Baboquivari meet. The final game, scheduled to start at 8 p.m., matches boys teams from Cienega and Tucson High.
The feature game is a 6:30 p.m., clash between Sahuaro and Salpointe Catholic. After almost a decade, the long-powerful Cougars teams of Dick McConnell and the Lancers contenders of Brian Peabody have been re-branded and are again traditional powers.
Cougars coach Jim Henry, a Sahuaro alumnus, is 122-58 in his seventh season. Salpointe coach Brian Holstrom is 149-61 in his eighth season.
Keep an eye on Salpointe junior Rylan O’Brien. In Thursday’s victory over Nogales, O’Brien made 11 3-point baskets and scored 35 points. The AIA lists just one player in state history, Pueblo’s Smiley Contreras in 2001 (with 14), having made more threes in a game.
This is also the busiest period of the prep basketball season; Sahuaro plays six games in nine days and the Lancers five games in eight days. Admission is $10 and is part of the Coaches For Charity nonprofit organization.
