If the Red Carpet Bowl is any indicator of what will take place on Saturday, Warren Central will have its hands full entertaining the city of Vicksburg.

With the exception of St. Aloysius, who’s playing its own home game that afternoon, the Vikings will host the Red Carpet Basketball Classic on Saturday from 10 a.m. to presumably 7 p.m. Roughly nine hours of high school basketball will be on display beginning with Porters Chapel and ending with the Vikings.

Unlike in August, the schools playing on Saturday will finish its final game of a back-to-back and has shifted all of its attention toward the district games on the road.

Among the other Region 6 4-A teams, Warren Central is at the bottom with a 0-1 record. Clinton sits at 2-1 while Greenville is tied with Murrah at 1-1.

“I’ve seen Greenville play at least three times,” Warren Central’s Bruce Robinson said. “That’s a district game and that’s a very important game.”

If the Vikings were to drop to 0-2 in district play against Greenville, it’ll be hard for them to bounce back for playoff contention. However, Robinson said it wouldn’t be the end of the road.

Warren Central is 6-3 at home and has played with resilience winning a few come-from-behind games. It played an undefeated Brookhaven squad into overtime, eventually falling short.

The Vikings have solace in knowing how well they play at home and have three district home games left in the season.

“One thing in our district, you have to defend home court,” Robinson said.

For the Lady Vikes, T.T. Sims is nursing bronchitis and D.D. Caldwell is nursing a back injury, but the girls will play in the Red Carpet Classic.

Against Greenville on Friday, Jackie Martin-Glass wants to extend her team’s time of possession, which she hopes will eliminate Greenville’s touches. She also wants to attack when necessary and control the pace of the game.

“If we implement our game plan and minimize our mistakes, we will put ourselves in a position to win,” Martin-Glass said.

 

Vicksburg vs. Northwest Rankin

The last game the Missy Gators played came down to post-game free throws, which they survived and advanced to face Lanier tonight.

To avoid repeating the Neshoba Central finale, the Missy Gators have worked to improve their man-to-man and 3-2 zone defenses.

Lanier is a team who likes to shoot 3s and drive the ball inside the lane.

Pleasure King said the team has practiced limiting perimeter shots and collapsing in the paint to limit Lanier’s specialties.

Saturday serves as a rematch against Northwest Rankin. The teams previously met in the Cougars’ holiday tournament on Dec. 29.

“By us beating them by a little, we want to expand that to a lot,” King said. “We were lacking on defense and then at the end we started coming together hard on defense know that we needed to win this game. We were focused on trying to win the game.”

The game with Lanier is always a big one for the Gators and playing it at home makes it a more important game.

A win over the Bulldogs is the on the forefront of the Gators’ mind as they seek to avoid dropping to 1-2 in Region 4 5-A and possibly being tied with Ridgeland for last place.

“They’re very athletic. They’re going to get after us and play that full-court and half-court trap and a real good, tough 2-3 zone,” Dellie C. Robinson said.

Opponents who’ve pressed and trapped Vicksburg have found success against the gators.

Jim Hill was able to beat the Gators in Monday’s Martin Luther King Tournament by trapping the guards across the half-court line.

Madison Central and Neshoba Central were able to get ahead doing the same thing.

“Anytime the scouting report says you have a hard time handling the basketball then they’re going to trap us,” Robinson said. “We’re looking for Lanier to come out and trap us. We’ve been working on it for the past couple of days and hopefully when we get to the ball game we can execute what we worked on.”

Unlike its previous game in the Vikings gym, the back-to-back isn’t perceived to be a problem for them.

“We’re not playing warren central for one thing,” Dellie said with a laugh. “But certainly Northwest (Rankin) got a good ball club. They’re real scrappy so we’re going to have to be a real good basketball team and a real good game to beat those guys on Saturday,” Robinson said.

 

Porters Chapel vs. Discovery Christian

The school kicking off the Red Carpet Classic really doesn’t know much about the opponent they’ll face after wraping up with Amite School Center.

In the second go around with Amite, Yocum wants her team to box out, cut out turnovers.

“If we can do those two things, less turnovers and boxing out that will definitely give us some points and take some of their points away.”

Amite is stronger with a height advantage over the Lady Eagles.

In the previous meeting, Amite outscored PCA by 30. Scoring has been difficult to come by for the Lady Eagles and Yocum has worked with post players to score in the paint for higher-percentage shots.

Yocum hopes her team can use Saturday’s game against unbeknownst Discovery to execute drills worked on in practice and improve as a team.

“I’m just hoping maybe it’ll finally all come together for us. Maybe be a team that possibly is a little more like us, a little bit more competitive and we can actually see how we fair offensively or defensively against a team that’s pretty compatible, to see if we’re growing any,” Yocum said.

For boy’s coach Stacey Sykes, he hopes to put up a more competitive effort against Amite after the 54-15 loss sustained two weeks ago.

“We didn’t play real well. We’re looking to play a little bit better against those guys. It’s going to be a challenge and I’m looking forward to going down there for a good game,” Sykes said.