Showcase to provide full day of high school basketball

~ Show Me Center will host seven games today in its first shootout.

Poplar Bluff will be playing for the first time in the Show Me Center.

Vienna (Ill.) will face a Missouri team for the first time.

Those are just a couple of reasons why the 20-year-old facility on the Southeast Missouri State University campus decided this was the year to join the shootout crowd, hosting a one-day basketball event.

The seven-game, 12-hour day will begin 10 a.m. today with rivals Farmington and De Soto squaring off.

Later games include Central taking on Vienna and St. Louis University-bound 7-footer Brett Thompson, Notre Dame against Gateway Tech of St. Louis, and state-ranked Class 5 teams Jackson and Webster Groves meeting in the 8:30 p.m. finale.

"Our concept is not to go nationwide and find people," said David Ross, director of the Show Me Center, "but to showcase teams that are in the St. Louis-to-Memphis corridor. We can bring in teams from our region to play, and provide people from the Cape Girardeau area an opportunity to see top-flight basketball."

The event will include a team from Memphis (White Station) and several from the St. Louis area as well as the local teams.

Poplar Bluff will make what Ross said is the program's first Show Me Center appearance at 11:45 a.m. against Fort Zumwalt South from St. Charles County.

"It was only three years ago that the fans in this region got to see All-American Tyler Hansbrough play in high school," Ross said, refering to the Poplar Bluff graduate now at North Carolina. "How many of us wish we had seen LeBron James or Michael Jordan play in high school? That's the kind of talent we're bringing in. It is one of our goals to provide regional schools with an opportunity to play top-quality opponents in a great basketball environment."

The showcase was unable to line up schedules with Sikeston, which Ross said also has never played at the Show Me Center, or a few other state-ranked area schools. The event next year will be played on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Also, the inaugural event did not want to overlap too much with the field for the 16-team Southeast Missourian Christmas Tournament, which includes final four participants from last year in Charleston (Class 3 state champ), Bell City (Class 1 runner-up) and Notre Dame (Class 4 runner-up). Jackson and Central also will play in that tournament, which begins Wednesday and concludes Dec. 29.

Defending Class 5 state champion McCluer North will play White Station in the 6:45 p.m. game, and the finale pits two teams ranked among the state's top 10 in the first poll for Class 5.

Another Class 5 team not ranked in the state poll, Lafayette, brings in 6-8 junior Tyler Griffey. The Lancers lost to McCluer North in the state sectional round last year.

Ross said basketball enthusiast Brian Roth, who had helped launch the Heartland Hoopfest in Perryville, provided the inspiration and legwork to get the showcase off the ground.

"He has been very enthusiastic about contacting coaches and having games," Ross said. "He got in touch with me last year and asked if there was a place on our schedule that we could put together a showcase. I was intrigued with the idea of having a showcase, but just didn't have the proper motivation, and Brian Roth provided that."