By Bobby Narang
The 50th Annual Jack Tosh Holiday Classic tips off Thursday, Dec. 26 at York High School.
The annual high school basketball tournament is one of the highlights of the basketball season because of the depth and diversity of the well-rounded tournament.
York coach Mike Dunn said the tournament is slated to be filled with several quality first-round matchups. Lake Zurich, Timothy Christian, and Christ The King are new entries this season.
“When you look at the depth of it, I think it’s the best tournament of the state,” Dunn said. “It’s not as top heavy as Pontiac, but there’s great balance from top to bottom, especially when you look at the first-round games. There are several fantastic games, which make it the best tournament in the state. We’re expecting great games and great competition.”
The York Dukes (4-4 and 0-2 West Suburban Silver) will play at Proviso West and Lake Zurich this week before opening up the Jack Tosh against Minooka at 8 p.m. on the 26th.
“We continue to be a work on progress,” Dunn said. “We lost eight seniors from last year’s sectional final team and then had several kids who had not played a lot last year. We have a very inexperienced group and some of our key younger kids are football kids, so they missed the first month of the season because they played in the state championship game. We’re working our way back, molding our team into what we thought they would be. We had our first full week of practice together.
“We’re making gradual improvements as a group. The football kids are working to get into basketball shape.”
Dunn noted the improvement of several players, most notably junior forward Hunter Stepanich, a three-sport athlete who plays football and volleyball
“Hunter was our sixth or seventh man last year on our team,” Dunn said. “He might be the best three-sport athlete I’ve ever coached in my high school career, boys or girls. He’s very coachable and a winner. He’s been a part of successful teams. James DeCicco has also done some good things for us this year. He didn’t play much as a junior last year, but he’s played really well this year. Eddy Sica has worked back into basketball shape and played spot bench off the bench last year, but he’s worked his way into the starting lineup.”