Hoops Classic just part of a great weekend
Busy weekend—but one of the best I have experienced this year. We left Friday for Grand Island to attend the Heartland Events Center Basketball Hoops Classic.
I have written a couple of articles about Tino Martinez and his outstanding event that has been going now for the past 13 years.
This one was one of the best I have a attended and I have been to almost all of them.
There were a number of things that went on that made it an outstanding time.
First of all, I got to spend a day with my oldest son, Troy, who made the trip out from Lincoln.
My old neighbor Doug Beck also made the trip. Getting to see them and all the basketball would have an outstanding day but there was more.
I had mentioned that a lot of other coaches that I know also attend this event and I got to touch base with a lot of them before during and after the eight games that were played at Heartland Events Center.
I spent time with Bill Holiday, who was a great coach but had a hunting accident and ended up in a wheel chair. Some of his friends loaded him up and got him to Grand Island.
There was great crowd there this year due to the outstanding lineup of teams so you either had to be looking for someone or just run into them.
But in Bill’s case, I had a gentlemen tap me on the back and ask me to turn around and wave at Bill.
I had a seat courtside and Bill was at the top of the seating area.
A wave wasn’t good enough. I hit the stairs and visited with him for a while. Great to see old coaching buddies, for sure.
I saw a number of players from other schools that knew me and some of them are coaching now.
Some were just fans and it was fun to run into them, even when I couldn’t remember their names or where they went to school but I just knew they looked familiar.
Probably the highlight of running into people was when I stopped just before the Millard North vs IMG game to wish North’s head coach good luck.
Their coach is Tim Cannon and we have known each other for 30 years or more and worked together with the Bison/Valentino’s Vegas Team.
There is a guy talking to Coach Cannon and I am not paying a lot of attention when Tim says “Larry, let me introduce you to Coach Hoiberg.”
Coach Hoiberg had made the trip to GI after the Husker’s game earlier to watch the only 5-star player in Nebraska—junior Hunter Sallis. So with all the other stuff that happened that was good, I spent about five minutes visiting with Coach Hoiberg.
Then, there were the ball games. Other than being there from 8:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., we saw some pretty good players and some very interesting games.
The biggest spread of the eight games was in the game featuring two of the “elite” teams. Sunrise Christian Academy out of Kansas buried Bishop Walsh from Maryland 78-37.
There were lot of good players on the floor during that game but one team was way better than the other.
The other elite team, IMG out of Florida, defeated Millard North 74-69. IMG has a lot of players going to Division One schools but North hung in there right to the end.
IMG did throw down 21 dunks in the game and a couple of them were unbelievable, either in skill level or the one that hit about 9 on the Richter scale.
I saw some really good C2 teams in Yutan and BRLD. They didn’t play each other but BRLS beat Hastings High and Yutan beat a pretty good Elm Creek team.
Ogallala gave a good effort but Auburn proved they are the number one team in C1 and defeated the Indians 73-68.
The final game featured Grand Island High vs Grand Island CC. Believe it or not, this was the first time these two schools had ever played each other.
Grand Island was rated 10th in Class A and Grand Island CC was rated 3rd in C2. It took a great effort by Grand Island to get the job done but they pulled it out 62-56 over Central Catholic.
As I said before, the crowd was one of the best, if not the biggest I had seen.
It was estimated to be at about 5,500. I don’t think there were that many at the final GI vs. GICC game but it was a good one.
So it was good time. Saw people that were friends, saw some I had not expected to see, saw mostly great games, saw a lot of great players, and had great weather to travel.
It all adds up to a good time.