By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

LYMAN — It’s been a little over two years since the boy’s basketball teams from Pascagoula and Gulfport have met on the hardwood.

But all that will change late Saturday afternoon.

In a last second re-schedule, the two top teams in the “Southern Six” will square off in the marquee match of “HoopsFest” 2025 here at Harrison Central High School at 4:30 p.m.

Red Rebel veteran head coach Boo Hardy was forced to scramble to re-schedule most of the five game slate after all the postponements this week due to the inclement weather but in the midst of all the chaos perhaps the biggest boys battle of the season emerged.

“I got a call from Coach Hardy and he said they had a team drop out,” Pascagoula head coach Lorenzo Wright, a former standout player at Gulfport, said Friday afternoon. “I am excited about the opportunity to play a ball club that is on a tremendous hot streak and against a coach who has turned that program back in the right direction. Iron sharpens iron so we are looking forward to the event on short notice.”

It will mark the first time the two teams have faced off since meeting in the annual “Panther Classic” in Pascagoula in mid-January of 2023.

That season, the Admirals took a clean sweep of the Panthers in three meetings. Those results came on the heels of the 2021-2022 campaign when PHS swept two games from Gulfport.

Currently, the two teams are ranked number one (Gulfport) and number two (Pascagoula) in the “SouthMiss6 Sports Super 7” weekly prep basketball poll which is voted on by selected head coaches in the area and media members.

The Admirals are a sparkling 23-1 overall under first-year head coach Brian Butler while the Panthers are 17-3.

Both teams are coming off perhaps their biggest respective wins of the season on Monday afternoon in two different MLK Day events.

In Laurel, Gulfport Gulfport moved to that 23-1 record with a 59-51 win over defending Class 7A state champion Meridian at Laurel High School in the “Wilson Terrell MLK Classic”.

The perennial state power Wildcats, who captured the first-ever Class 7A state championship in the state of Mississippi last year, ended Gulfport’s season in the process eliminating the Admirals in the opening round of the state playoffs en route to their second state title in seven seasons.

““I’m just extremely proud of our guys!” Butler said Monday. “They feel like if they prepare properly and work hard, they can compete with anyone in the state. Today, playing a perennial and defending state champ meant a little more to them. They were determined to show the entire state that they are ready for top completion. Games like today bring the best out of them… and they love it.”

Morris Robertson, Jr., guided Gulfport with 17 points in the win, while C.J. Burnham chipped in 11 points and Denzel Jackson had nine points.

Around the same time, in Clinton at A.E Wood Coliseum on the campus of Mississippi College,the Panthers slipped past powerful Class 7A foe Germantown 74-69 in game five of the prestigious “Rumble in the South”.

The win not only pushed Pascagoula to 17-3 overall, but dropped the Mavericks to 19-4 as well.

After losing in the Class 7A state championship game to Meridian last season, Germantown is considered one of the favorites to reach the state championship round again this season in the largest classification in the state. The Mavericks were ranked as the top overall team in the state by several media outlets coming into this week.

“Excited today about the win over the number one ranked team in the state,” PHS head coach Lorenzo Wright said, afterwards. “I thought it was a total team effort by the guys. We played really well defensively, and we had some guys make some shots and some guys that stepped up and performed really well.”

The Panthers made their intentions of a big day known right off the bat, out-dueling the Mavericks in what was an explosive opening quarter 23-21 thanks in part to 11 points in the period from Quey’Sean Taylor including a 3-pointer.

Kelan Rich paced Pascagoula with 19 points in the win, while the Moss Point transfer Taylor chipped in 16 points to the winning effort and both Blake Nettles and Tomareo Johnson each added 10 points apiece. Nettles also pulled down a game-high eight rebounds.