A veteran Hopkins crew looking to three-peat matches up with Lakeville North, which is replacing four of its top five players from a season ago in the evening boys' game at the Breakdown Sports Tip Off Classic.  The Panthers will be playing their second game in as many nights (the Panthers face Chaska Friday) while Hopkins opens at Minneapolis Patrick Henry on Thursday night.

The Royals are everybody’s favorite to win Class AAAA and why not? They return 24.7 points a game from Minnesota Gopher signee Joe Coleman, 18.4 points a game from Northern Iowa signee Marvin Singleton, 8.0 points a game from national top 100 2012 prospect Siyani Chambers (who is the No. 1 ranked prospect in Minnesota’s 2012 class per Minnesota Preps) and 6.8 points a game from Zach Stahl (a top ten prospect in 2012 per Minnesota Preps).  Add in sophomore Demetrius Martin, the much improved Jacob Peterson in the post, shooter Nick Jorgensen and some young athletes and you have quite a versatile group.

North is in a transition year with good youth likely to take on bigger roles.  The agile Tyler Flaak, Brett Rasmussen and Devon Shockley are some of the juniors you will see get after it in red and black.  This group will mix with one of the metro’s tougher guards Al Erickson and leading returning scorer Alex Moore who averaged 10.6 points per game for an 18-win Panther team.