Border League prep basketball tourney offers exposure for players
The high school basketball season doesn’t begin in Nevada until December, but some of the country’s best teams will be on display this weekend in Las Vegas.
The second annual Border League will be played Friday through Sunday, with 84 boys teams in six divisions and 16 girls teams in two divisions. Most of the teams will be from Nevada, California, Utah and Arizona.
The top boys division is Top Flight and will feature Bishop Gorman, playing as LV Orange, and Coronado, playing as AirNado. Because it is a preseason tournament, the teams must play as club teams and not as official representatives of their schools. Other local teams include players from powers Durango, Clark and Liberty, among others.
“The whole idea was let’s get our team into an event where we have high-level competition and exposure that is going to help out our kids,” Coronado boys coach Jeff Kaufman said. “So many of these kids have missed out on so much, especially with our kids in Nevada losing a whole season.”
The Top Flight games will be played at Coronado, and eight of them will be televised on the ESPN family of networks.
Saturday’s games will be on ESPN+, and three showcase games Sunday will be on ESPNU. The championship game will be on ESPN2 at 7 p.m. Sunday.
Durango, Silverado, Spring Valley and the Las Vegas Basketball Center will also host games.
The event will feature the top-ranked senior in the country by ESPN in Shaedon Sharpe, a Kentucky commit. No. 4 Amari Bailey (UCLA), No. 15 Dior Johnson (Oregon), No. 17 Adem Bona and No. 20 M.J. Rice (Kansas) will also play in the Top Flight division, along with standouts with local ties, such as former Desert Pines standout and No. 52 Milos Uzan and Coronado’s No. 78 Rickie Isaacs (Texas Tech).
They will be joined by top-50 juniors in No. 11 Mikey Williams, No. 13 Caleb Foster, No. 29 Jared McCain and No. 49 Bronny James, the son of NBA star LeBron James.
Centennial and Spring Valley, the presumptive top teams in the valley this season on the girls’ side, will also participate. Spring Valley’s Aaliyah Gayles, ESPN’s No. 8 senior, is the top recruit in the girls event.
“All the teams involved in this at every level have been really working hard for their kids,” Kaufman said. “The coaches have been really great about everything. College coaches will have an opportunity to be here, and with there being boys and girls teams, there are opportunities across the board.”
For more information on the Border League, go to basketball.exposureevents.com and click on the events tab.
Contact Jason Orts at jorts@reviewjournal.com. Follow @SportsWithOrts on Twitter.
