The 78th Annual Normandy Holiday Invitational Basketball Tournament should provide some of the best Christmas hoops action in the St. Louis area.
After putting on a scaled down eight-team tournament last year, the Normandy Tournament is back with a robust 16-team field that will feature teams from Chicago, Memphis as well as some of the best talent in St. Louis. Our visitors from Chicago and Memphis will be bringing some big-time talent with them to the STL.
The Normandy Tournament will run from December 27-30 at the venerable Viking Hall, which is still the best high school basketball venue in the area.
The four teams from Memphis in the revamped field include Melrose, Whitehaven, Wooddale and Ridgeway. Memphis Ridgeway comes in as the No. 2 seed while Melrose drew the No. 4 seed.
Adding a little Chi-town flavor to the Normandy Tournament will be Chicago Public League stalwarts Foreman and Marshall.
The top seed in the tournament will be Soldan High, which will be one of the leading contenders for the Missouri Class 4 state title. The Tigers are loaded with talent and senior experience, including guards Paul McRoberts, Pete Sanders and forwards Randy Holmes and Kawan Griffin.
No. 3 seed Cardinal Ritter will feature the tournament’s top individual player in 6’8″ senior Cameron Biedscheid, who has already signed with Notre Dame. The Lions are the defending Normandy Tournament champions.
Imagine College Prep is the No. 10 seed, but the Lions are a dangerous team that is capable of advancing deep into the tournament. Imagine features one of the area’s top dynamic duos in juniors Kevin Baker and Martavian Payne.
Rounding out the field are Hazelwood East, Gateway Tech, Normandy, McCluer South-Berkeley, Roosevelt, Vashon and Ritenour.
The action will conclude on December 30 with the championship game at 6 p.m. I hope everyone gets a chance to make it to Viking Hall to take in some of the action at Normandy. It’s a wonderful place to watch basketball; and with an excellent field, it should be a great weekend of holiday hoops.
B.J. on fire
Former McCluer North standout B.J. Young has been on fire in recent games during his freshman year at Arkansas. The 6’3″ Young lit up defending NCAA champion Connecticut for 28 points in a nationally-televised loss to the Huskies on Dec. 3. He followed that up with a 24-point performance against Oklahoma last Saturday. Through seven games, Young is averaging 16.5 points a game while shooting 51 percent from the field and 48 percent from 3-point range.
Visitation tournament
The Visitation Holiday Girls Tournament gets underway on Saturday with eight first-round games. The match-ups include: Parkway South vs. Fort Zumwalt West at 10 a.m.; Hazelwood Central vs. Lafayette at 11:30 a.m.; Cor Jesu vs. Webster Groves at 1 p.m.; St. Joseph’s vs. Rosati-Kain at 2:30 p.m.; Incarnate Word vs. Notre Dame at 4 p.m.; Francis Howell Central vs. Principia at 5:30 p.m.; Metro vs. Kirkwood at 7 p.m., Visitation vs. Nerinx Hall at 8:30 p.m. The tournament will resume on December 26 with the finals to be held on December 28 at 8:30 p.m.
Warrior Classic
Lutheran North opened its season by winning the championship of the Warrior Classic at St. Charles West. The Crusaders defeated Hazelwood West 68-64 in a rematch of last year’s championship game, which was won by West. Lutheran North is a veteran team that is capable of making quite a bit of noise in Class 3 this season. Junior guard Anthony Virdure and senior forward Anthony Mitchell averaged both averaged 16 points a game in the tournament.
(You can follow Earl Austin Jr.’s daily basketball reports on his website, www.earlaustinjr.com. You can also follow Earl at twitter.com/earlaustinjr.)
