Sikeston chases first title since 2018 at St. Dominic

SIKESTON – The Sikeston Bulldogs boys basketball team will continue its recent holiday tradition of playing in the 30th Annual St. Dominic Christmas Tournament beginning Wednesday.

Sikeston received the top seed in this year’s field and will open with eighth-seeded Hannibal at 5:30 p.m. at St. Dominic High School.

After playing in various tournaments over the holiday break throughout the late 1990s and 2000s, the Bulldogs finally found a competitive tournament with great crowds and a fun atmosphere against St. Louis area teams that Sikeston rarely sees.

This year marks the 14th straight year that Sikeston has competed at St. Dominic since joining the field in 2010.

“St. Dominic is a great host,” Sikeston coach Gregg Holifield said. “They treat us very well and our players really like it. It’s good competition.”

The tournament typically features a competitively balanced field where even first-round opponents can give the higher seeds a run for their money.

“It’s going to be a good tournament,” Sikeston coach Gregg Holifield said. “You’ve got some quality teams in it. St. Dominic, Timberland, Lutheran-St. Charles, St. Charles West are all very quality teams. I think St. Dominic is an outstanding team. We’ve just got to go in there and do our job and play as hard as we can regardless of our opponent and see what happens.”

Sikeston has experienced tremendous success in the tournament – winning the championship eight out of nine years from 2010-2018.

However, the Bulldogs have come up short the last four years, which is something Holifield is hoping to rectify this year.

“It’s been a very difficult tournament,” Holifield said. “Yes, we’ve had some success, but we haven’t won it since the 2018-2019 season, but every game we play is always competitive and tough. We’ve played against high caliber competition over the years with numerous Division I athletes. It is a great tournament that helps get our team better.”

This year’s Sikeston team, with lofty preseason expectations, enters the tournament as the favorite. So far, Sikeston has lived up to the billing as they have won two tournaments already – the Fountain City Classic in De Soto and the SEMO Conference Tournament in Sikeston – on their way to an 8-0 record this year.

Only one of those eight wins, a 72-70 win over New Madrid County Central in the SEMO Conference finals, was a close game.

However, Holifield is expecting tough competition at St. Dominic, particularly from the host school, who is also the defending champions in the tournament.

The Crusaders are the No. 2 seed and currently have a 6-2 record, losing to a pair of undefeated teams against Francis Howell and Columbia Hickman in close contests.

“They return everybody from last year,” Holifield said of St. Dominic. “They won the tournament last year and I think they have all the ingredients to have an outstanding season. They’re very well-coached and we hope to think we will get an opportunity to see them.”

St. Dominic is coached by Kevin Roberts, who was the head coach at Notre Dame from 2008-2014 and had a fierce rivalry with Holifield’s Bulldogs through that stretch. Roberts still has a hefty amount of respect for Sikeston.

“I’ve coached against Gregg and that staff for so many years down there in Cape,” Roberts said in a recent interview. “I love it. Gregg and I have become good friends. It’s just the competition. Gregg is a winner. I want our team to be like Sikeston — built like Sikeston. When we play each other it’s just really good healthy competition against two really quality programs.”

Roberts has guided St. Dominic to three tournament championships in the last four years.

Sikeston is led by returning all-state senior and Abilene Christian recruit Dontrez Williams, who leads the team in points (20.3) and rebounds (7.8).

Junior guard Tristan Wiggins follows up with 15.5 points per game and leads the team with 22 3-pointers made, shooting at an outstanding 55 percent clip from beyond the arc.

Junior guard P.J. Farmer routinely fills the stat sheet, averaging 12 points, 7.3 rebounds, 8.9 assists and 4.5 steals per game.

Trace Sadler, a 7-foot junior, patrols the paint and leads the team with 3.3 blocks per game.

Junior Lekereon McCray and sophomore Kobe Thomas both average a shade over seven points per game. Senior J’kwon Applewhite and junior Chris Artis round out the usual rotation, combining to average 10 points and providing crucial defensive energy for the team.

St. Dominic High School is located in O’Fallon, Mo. – a three-hour bus ride for the Bulldogs, but Holifield says his program has gotten used to life on the road over the years.

“It’s a lot of travel for us,” Holifield said. “But we play a lot of games in the St. Louis area and sometimes it’s difficult spending so much time on the road when most of the other teams in the tournament are within 15 minutes. It’s a true road situation for us, but we embrace the challenge and I think it helps our team every year.”

The tournament begins Wednesday. The semifinals will be held on Thursday with the championship game scheduled for 5:30 p.m. on Friday.