The Park Hill South girls’ basketball teams poses for a picture before taking on Perry (Arizona) in the only game that every player was active for in the Nike Tournament of Champions in Mesa, Arizona, on Dec. 18.
MESA – Getting the opportunity to play some of the best girls’ basketball teams in the nation, Park Hill South (5-3) impressed in the Nike Tournament of Champions in Mesa, Arizona, right before Christmas.
The tournament halfway across the map had seven divisions with 128 elite squads, a majority of which were in the preseason top-25 in the Nation. Park Hill South was invited last spring and was put into the John Anderson Division with 16 teams from seven different states and took fourth place.
“Last spring somebody had said something to me about it, so I reached out to the lady who ran it through Nike and told her about our team,” Park Hill South girls’ basketball coach Josh Dorr said. “Obviously at the time, it was a little different team because it was back around April but it kind of took off from there.”
Since it lost two starters from last year’s team, Park Hill South ended up in a different division than originally expected. It was a long process from the time the Lady Panthers decided to be in the tournament to when they actually traveled to Arizona to play.
“From an academic side, I wanted to make sure all the administration was alright with this since it’s also their last week in school, but everyone was on board and supportive. I planned the flights and hotels in early November and then right before Thanksgiving, there was a guy does all the brackets who called to try and figure out where to place us,” Dorr said.
The Lady Panthers had a decent shot to win their bracket, but they weren’t fully healthy the entire week they were there. Having one game a day from Dec. 18 to Dec. 21, Park Hill South walked away from Legacy Sports Park with a 2-2 record despite not being at full strength.
“Avery (Simmons) missed the last three games and Addison (Bjorn) missed the last one. There were probably 16 courts in that building and they had seven running at one time, so it was cool for the girls to see all the different teams playing,” Dorr said.
Park Hill South opened the tournament against a pair of Arizona teams, winning both. In her only game she played, Avery Simmons scored 11 points and grabbed 15 boards – which was a career-high in rebounds and her fourth double-double of the year – in the 43-37 victory over Perry (7-9).
The Lady Panthers went on to erase a 15-point first-half deficit to defeat Mesquite (13-2) in the next round by a score of 47-43 when Addison Bjorn tallied 22 points, 11 rebounds, three assists, four blocks and two steals. In the Nike Tournament of Champions, there was a 35-second shot clock that Park Hill South only violated once in four games.
“It was cool to be able to use that and do different things with it. In the second game, we were coming back in the second half so with a minute and a half to go we were losing by three or four and we knew we had at least two more possessions left so there’s a lot more strategy that goes into it,” Dorr said.
Park Hill South fell short in its last two games, starting with a buzzer-beating loss to a Colorado School. Mullen (7-4) knocked down a 3-pointer at the end of the game to win 40-37 on Dec. 20.
“They had kind of slowly worked their way back into the game and tied it. They got a few chances with two inbounds after an offensive rebound and then we knocked it out-of-bounds, somebody just slipped into the right spot and hit it,” Dorr said.
Without Bjorn, the Lady Panthers lost the third-place game to Carondelet (10-1) as the California school won 63-35 on Dec. 21. Bjorn ended on the all-tournament team and Park Hill South earned some pivotal exposure to new opponents.
“I wanted our schedule to be a little different this year, not just play the same old same teams around here the whole time. I think that’s been good for us as a team; just learning and playing against good competition that we aren’t used to playing,” Dorr said.
For the third time this season, Park Hill South is once again going to travel a ways for its next couple of games as well. The Lady Panthers will be in the Sophie Cunningham Classic at Columbia College to play Incarnate Word Academy (5-0) and Helias Catholic (5-3) on Jan. 5 and 6.