Early showdown previews thrilling basketball season
Lions look to end title drought, while Mavericks have plenty of potential
Khris Turner is still getting accustomed to the limelight.
Turner’s Morton Ranch team played in the RCS Sports Season Opener for the first time last year. The showcase at the Campbell Center features some of the city’s best teams and acts as the unofficial alert amid football madness that basketball season has arrived.
Usually he’d be where most everyone else is during this event — in the stands — but Turner is grateful for the opportunity and thrilled for his players.
“It’s funny to be able to play in it and not watch,” Turner said.
There are few opponents better to open the season against than Yates — the kind of team regularly buoyed by an entire sub-section of Houston rather than a student section on its side of the gym.
Both Yates and Morton Ranch got the test they needed Saturday. Yates won 102-100 but not before sweating out the second half. Yates rode its fullcourt press to a 13-point halftime lead before Morton Ranch’s comeback. LJ Cryer led Morton Ranch with 37 points, and Antwon Norman had 34 for Yates.
The roster Yates fielded Saturday isn’t a finished product. The Lions welcome four highly touted transfers this season — Gerald Doakes, Chuks Isitua, Elijah Elliott and Allen Udemadu. Only Elliott suited up Saturday, though, with the other three dealing with injuries and illness.
These two teams have much in common. Morton Ranch is ranked No. 2 in Texas Association of Basketball Coaches’ Class 6A preseason rankings. Yates is No. 2 in the 4A poll.
This meeting was supposed to happen last year in nondistrict play, but it was one of the activities canceled as a precaution by Houston
ISD after the shooting of Lamar student Delindsey Dwayne Mack, who was a transfer from Yates at the time.
Led by senior Big 12 Conference signees — Cryer, a Baylor pledge, at point guard and TCU commit Eddie Lampkin in the post — Morton Ranch is charged with being the Houston area’s best shot at knocking down vaunted Duncanville. Morton
Ranch won 28 games last year on the way to its first regional quarterfinal berth.
In many ways, the Mavericks are trying to take the first steps toward filling the kinds of shoes Yates regularly walks in.
Turner says they’ve had the talent to do so. Few realized it. He referenced the 2011 team that won the program’s first playoff game — the school is just over 15 years old. It didn’t get back to that point until 2017, watching Katy ISD brethren Seven Lakes and Tompkins achieve more first.
Now Morton Ranch is the toast of the city.
“Some of it, too, is the rise in social media,” said Turner, concerning the fervor around his program. “More eyes are on you, and it’s more means of getting attention. I think that has a lot to do it with it, too. But this attention is different. I’ve never been part of anything like it before.”
No one is rejecting it, though. Turner notes some of that talent in Morton Ranch’s junior high schools used to move to other districts. They want to stay now, he says.
Turner said he knows the expectation after this senior class graduates is that the program will fall off again. He hopes the intact talent pipeline changes opinions quickly.
Turner is eager for more non-district games against teams like Yates, and he’s getting it. Morton Ranch plays another highly regarded team in Dickinson later this month.
Yates coach Greg Wise loves the measuring stick Morton Ranch provides, and he’ll also get more of that, as usual.
Yates plays Montverde Academy out of Florida on Nov. 30 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas. Duncanville plays Bronny James Jr., Zaire Wade and Sierra Canyon in the game before Yates that day. And on Nov. 29, Yates plays Sunrise Christian from Kansas at Sandra Meadows Arena.
Yates lives in this kind of lane, an attraction — and sometimes a lightning rod of controversy — anywhere it goes. Wise says the attention has been a constant for so long it’s welcomed. The team thrives in it.
The four-time state champion Lions fell short in their first state tournament appearance since 2014 last year .
The transfers inject excitement into a team that usually doesn’t need such thing. Doakes is a transfer from Arkansas. Isitua and Udemadu, who bring size to Yates’ highflying style of play, were homeschooled last year. Elliott is a transfer from St. Thomas.
Combine that with known commodities like Norman and Rubin Jones, and of course there is talk of ending a title drought five years too long for those in Third Ward.
“If we get everybody in and acclimated, without question it can be the second-best team I’ve ever had, and talent-wise, it could be the best team I’ve had,” Wise said, admitting taking the “best Yates team ever” mantle from the national champion 200910 outfit might be tough to pull off.