By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

KILN — Perhaps the most anticipated prep basketball game of the season in not only the “Southern Six” and all of South Mississippi but across the state as well takes place Thursday night in Wendell Ladner Gymnasium on the campus of Hancock High School.
The unbeaten and home-standing Hancock Lady Hawks host the equally impressive record-wise Biloxi Lady Indians who stand 16-1 overall at 6 p.m. The two teams are old and familar foes as they shared membership in Region 8-6A for some 15 seaons until this year when the Mississippi High School Activities Association expanded to a seventh classification for the first time in history.
With the expansion, Hancock remained in Class 6A and Biloxi moved up to the new Class. 7A.

The teams faced off three times last season, when both squads enjoyed immensely successful campaigns as well, with the Lady Hawks taking the first two meetings before eventual league champions Biloxi knocked off HHS 42-30 in the region tournament.
Bioxi’s only blemish on its schedule so far this season is an almost inexplicable 21-17 loss to visiting Theodore at the Biloxi Sports Arena on the last day of November. That loss came after the Lady Indians opened the year with eight straight wins, and since then they have won eight consecutive games again.
Biloxi is coming off a pair of commanding wins in its own seventh annual Lady Indians Christmas Classic as the host team bombed St. Scholastica of Covington, La., 72-22 one week ago as 6-foot-2 freshman center Zaniya Johnson went for a career-high 43 points and grabbed 13 rebounds and then Biloxi closed the event out early Friday evening posting a 58-19 thumping of Greene Couty, Ala., out of Eutaw, Ala.

Hancock is coming off its closest decision of the season so far just six days ago in Biloxi as well when the Lady Hawks slipped past Booker T. Washington High of Pensacola Fla., 34-31 on Friday.
In that game, Riley Bishop scored a game-high 12 points for Hancock while Anslee James added nine points.
In their first game of the tourney, one week ago, the Lady Hawks beat Wayne County 59-44 as senior standout Brooklyn Cuevas tallied a game-high 24 points including a trio of 3-pointers. Bishop also added 12 points in that winning effort.
Cuevas, a recent William Carey signee, is coming off a career-high 30-point game in which she drained six treys Tuesday night in a big 68-24 win.