Texas A&M recruit Naji Hibbert played against his former team for the first time since transferring.
St. Frances Academy's Dante Holmes led all scorers with 17 points.
By Ryan Mink
rmink@digitalsports.comHad they remained in their home of Baltimore, Wednesday’s game would have been quite different.
But when Naji Hibbert and Josh Selby transferred to DeMatha before last season, the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference leader gained a bit more power over St. Frances Academy, the MIAA’s defending champion.
That shift showed in a meeting of the two area’s respective powerhouses at High Point in The Rock Summer League, where the Baltimore boys led DeMatha to a 53-46 win over their former mates.
Rising junior Josh Selby, who notched a team-high 16 points, was instrumental in guiding the Stags to the victory after DeMatha took a 11-0 lead to start the game but saw St. Frances claw back to take a two-point lead. He hit back-to-back jumpers to give DeMatha a four-point lead with 2 minutes, 39 seconds remaining.
Selby transferred from John Carroll and grew up playing basketball in Baltimore. He plays for the Baltimore-based AAU Team Melo squad.
“I was looking for a lot of excitement,” Selby said. “Playing against my home team, I wanted to beat them, but I also missed playing for them. It was a great game, we came up with the victory and they’ve got to go home.”
Asked if he had mixed feelings about beating his Baltimore friends, Selby laughed and brushed it off.
“As long as my team wins, I’m good,” Selby said. “We’re friends off the court but on the court we’re enemies. When we step on the court we’re not fooling. I treat them like I treat anyone else.”
For Hibbert, who finished with seven points, it was his first time facing his former team, as he transferred to DeMatha from St. Frances before last season. But for him, the reunion didn’t seem to hold any significance.
“It was a regular game,” said DeMatha’s Naji Hibbert, a rising senior who has committed to Texas A&M. “We don’t have nothing to prove. We just came ready to play and got the win.”
DeMatha will surely rely heavily on the two reunited Baltimorians, who have been AAU teammates since elementary school. The Stags return as one of the favorites to win the crown this year after losing to O’Connell in last year’s Washington Catholic Athletic Conference semifinals.
“Last year we had a chance to win so this year we’re trying to take the summer league games as a step forward,” Selby said. “If we do good in that, we’ll come out with the WCAC championship -- and that’s what we’re looking forward to.”
St. Frances is without Maryland-recruit Sean Mosley, last year’s DigitalSports Player of the Year. But his absence didn’t weigh heavily on the mind of rising junior Dante Holmes, who scored a game-high 17 points in the loss.
“A lot of people told me that Naji was going to try to dominate me today so I just came out and played my hardest,” Holmes said. “My teammates helped me do my best. … I had a terrible game against Carroll so I just wanted to come back and have a good game against two of the best players in the country, Josh Selby and Naji Hibbert.”