When fans go to a high school basketball game, they usually anticipate paying $5 for a ticket … if that. For fans who were absolutely set on seeing Saturday's matinee faceoff between Las Vegas (Nev.) Bishop Gorman High and Las Vegas (Nev.) Findlay Prep -- both of which are ranked in the RivalsHigh 100's Top 25 -- they had to shell out a lot, lot more.

Findlay Prep star Winston Shepard — Rivals.com

Because of a venue shift from UNLV's home court at the Thomas & Mack Center to the much smaller adjoining Cox Pavilion, the Gorman-Findlay crosstown faceoff couldn't fit nearly as many fans as wanted to get in. As detailed by the Las Vegas Sun, both UNLV and the high school game were played on Saturday, and both were televised on different networks, which meant they couldn't be hosted in the same building.

Regardless of the reasoning behind the venue switch, hosting the crosstown rivalry game at the Cox Pavilion created a bit of a ticket shortage. In fact, there was such high unmet demand that a few selected seats were posted on StubHub for the game.

Now, the Gorman-Findlay game is almost certainly not the first time that high school tickets have made their way on to StubHub. Yet it probably is the first time that re-sold prep tickets were listed at more than $100 a pop.

On Friday evening, less than 24 hours before the game's tip-off, tickets had a high of $166 per seat. In total, eight tickets were listed on Friday, ranging from $99 to that $166 high. The Sun reported that earlier on Friday 12 tickets had ranged from $90 to $201.

By Saturday morning those prices had decreased … though only slightly. The top ticket price among seven available was $132, with the mid-range price listed at $115 and the "cheap" seats costing $92.

Across the nation, school districts continue to face tough decisions to close gaps in funding, with sports programs occasionally finding themselves in the crosshairs. Most notably, the Duval County School District, an area which includes Jacksonville, planned to completely eliminate all sports funding before private donations made some Jacksonville school sports possible.

Premont High football team — Corpus Christi Caller-Times/Michael Zamora/AP

Now a small town in South Texas is cutting out all sports completely, but it has made that hard decision for another reason entirely: It needs all students to dramatically improve academically, or else it might close for good.

As first reported by the Associated Press, the Premont Independent School District unilaterally decided to cancel all interscholastic athletics for the remainder of the 2011-12 school year in a last ditch effort to save Premont schools, which have been on probation by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) since spring of 2011.

Finally, the TEA announced in the middle of the fall semester that the entire school district would be forced to close on July 1. That order has since been put on hold, but the school district must prove that it has made sufficient progress by the end of the school year, or else it will be annexed by an adjoining district which, in a particularly sparsely populated stretch of South Texas, is still some 35 miles away.

The biggest step toward making those improvements is the district's decision to cut sports, a move which flies in the face of small-town Texas culture, where high school football, basketball and baseball stars are revered like rock stars and actors in New York City and Hollywood.

Yet for Premont students, that reverence won't matter if there's no school to play for.

"Sports is sacred ground in the state of Texas," Premont Superintendent Ernest Singleton told the AP's Christopher Sherman. "But because we're so far behind with student performance I wanted an environment that was academic only."

There are an abundance of other problems in the Premont Schools, among them that a startling number of the district's 570 students either skip school entirely or miss far too many classes. There are also infrastructure problems with the school buildings even after the district consolidated its three schools into two just a year ago.

In its heyday, the wildly popular Dave "Chappelle's Show" on Comedy Central featured a recurrent sketch called "When keeping it real goes wrong." The premise was that dedication to an overwrought tough-guy image tended to precede a downfall. With that in mind, the video you see directly below is the absolute test case in "When saving the ball goes wrong."

The player you see attempting to make one of the season's more acrobatic saves -- and instead hitting one of its most unlikely and unlucky baskets -- is one Daniel Helm of the Chatham (Ill.) Glenwood High basketball team. In the midst of a 59-37 whitewash of Lincoln (Ill.) High at the Meijer Glenwood Winter Classic, Helm found himself rushing toward a sideline chasing after a loose ball.

He got to the ball in time to keep it in bounds, but had to hurl it behind him as he went hurtling over the sideline and toward the crowd. Instead of finding a teammate -- or even an opponent for that matter -- the ball found the backboard and the bottom of the net, scoring a badly needed three points for Lincoln.

Incredibly, Helm's acrobatics had led to what was quite literally the worst possible result. Instead of helping his team get another shot, he hit a 3-pointer for his opponent.

With the Indiana Pacers on a West Coast swing, team officials thought it would be a good idea to get team mascot Boomer out on the road for some good old-fashioned halftime exercise. The furry yellow and blue creature made a stop at New Palestine (Ind.) High on Friday night, where he planned to complete his usual halftime dunkathon, in which he takes off on a trampoline and throws down an acrobatic slam.

He did ... and he made sure that the game would have to be completed at a new gym in the process. As first reported by the Greenfield Reporter and WISH-TV (and brought to Prep Rally's attention by Larry Brown Sports), Boomer's first dunk at halftime of the boys basketball game between New Palestine and Triton (Ind.) Central High completely shattered the backboard. Boomer brought down the rim, the backboard and, appropriately, the house in the process.

While the dunk may have further cemented Boomer's place in the high school fans' hearts, the sudden lack of a second workable basket caused some significant problems for New Palestine officials. Unlike NBA arenas, where a spare backboard is pretty much always around just in case a rim gets ripped off, high school facilities aren't usually prepared for that kind of an issue.

[Related: School nixes Cougars mascot to avoid offending middle-aged women]

Yet, in New Palestine's case, there was a solution: According to the Reporter, the second half of the game was moved down to the school's auxiliary gym, which couldn't hold as many fans but did have the requisite working backboards to play a game.

We're finally beyond any specter of the football season (outside of Signing Day, of course ... buckle your seat belt for that puppy) and completely immersed in basketball, which can mean only one thing: The athletic wonder clips are coming from all over. As impressive as these highlights are, there were plenty more where this crop came from.

• D.J. Miles, Chicago (Ill.) Marshall vs. Chicago (Ill.) Crane: There are top plays churned out every week in the Windy City, but few this week could compare with Miles' acrobatic poster jam off a steal. Yikes, and watch out below!

• Jordan McLaughlin, Etiwanda (Calif.) vs. Upland (Calif.): Somehow, Jordan McLaughlin (his full name is Thomas Jordan McLaughlin) has slipped below the national recruiting radar. His skill set would seem to dictate he shouldn't, and a handful of explosive plays like the dunk you see below would seem to indicate that the sophomore may be showing up on a lot more regional and national lists soon.

• Demarcus Robinson, Peach County (Ga.) vs. Crawford County (Ga.): You know how sometimes the real beauty in a breakaway slam is in the assist? Just check out how the point guard sets up Demarcus Robinson (who happens to be a top football prospect with scholarship offers from Florida and Georgia) for a monster of a trailer slam on this play. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you reward the big man for running the floor.

• Josh Bray, Stillwater Christian School (Mont.) vs. Clark Fork (Ida.): Boy, did Bray come out of nowhere to throw down this slam. Starting out from behind the arc when a three was fired from across the floor, Bray skied in to throw home a monster jam more befitting of LeBron James than an unheralded prospect from Big Sky country.

• Rashaun Stimage, Chicago (Ill.) Farragut vs. Chicago (Ill.) Marshall: Remember what Prep Rally said about Chicago being loaded with big plays? Well, case in point. Stimage refused to settle for a simple putback on this play, instead elevating for as monstrous a tip slam as you'll see.

It's not quite fair to say that high school junior Mamadou Ndiaye stands out. It's more like he stands above.

At 7-foot-5, Ndiaye is easily the tallest high school basketball player in California, and we can pretty much safely say, the rest of the country as well. In fact, Ndiaye is so tall that the Guinness World Records recently tried to track down an official measurement to determine if he is the tallest high school basketball player in the world.

None of those strict delineations are particularly important, of course, because one thing is certain: Ndiaye is so tall that he's pretty much impossible to defend … or get around when he's playing defense. As artfully chronicled by The Daily, Ndiaye stars for the Huntington Beach (Calif.) Brethren Christian School basketball team and is taller than any player on a current NBA roster, a place where he could find himself in a short three years if he continues developing.

"Right now his game is basically catch, turn, drop-step, dunk," Brethren Christian basketball coach Jon Bahnsen told The Daily. "But this kid's going to play professionally someday. The minute Mamadou enrolled I became a much better basketball coach."

Mamadou Ndiaye — TheTallestMan.com

Make no mistake: Ndiaye is not a Thon Maker, a teen who seemingly slipped right into everyday American life and life on the basketball court as if he'd been playing for a decade. Yet while his skill set may be much more raw, Ndiaye is even more of an enigma.

Ndiaye's trek to the U.S. is a strange and secretive one, complete with two different schools of enrollments of 250 students or fewer. The first of those, Simi Valley (Calif.) Stoneridge Prep, helped Ndiaye get a student visa … and a physical examination, where they discovered he had a large tumor on his pituitary gland which was likely contributing to his rampant growth and also impinging on his sense of sight. Doctors estimated he had two years to remove the tumor, at most, or risk losing all sight.

While Stoneridge Prep couldn't afford to fund his surgery, charitable donations did, and a married couple who lives near Brethren Christian became the enormous Senegalese teen's official legal guardians.

Remember when Irving (Texas) MacArthur High girls basketball coach Suzie Oelschlegel agreed to get a tattoo of a grammatically incorrect phrase because her team won a state title? Perhaps that permanent dedication to her coaching craft was noticed by officials on high, because Oelschlegel was recently named girls basketball's National Coach of the Year by the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS).

The Irving MacArthur girls basketball team — LadyCardinalBasketball.net

Yes, that's right: The new girls basketball National Coach of the Year has "We n dat thing" tattooed somewhere on her body.

Of course, it's likely that the NFHS was more swayed by Oelschlegel's outstanding body of work on the court. The longtime MacArthur teacher and coach -- she's been at the school for more than three decades -- has an almost impeccable record in recent seasons. In fact, according to the Dallas Morning News, Oelschlegel's teams are a combined 134-10 since the 2008-09 campaign.

MacArthur coach Suzie Oelschlegel — LadyCardinalsBasketball.net

Most notably, her state title-winning squad in 2010-11 was 37-2, all while overcoming the pressure inherent in earning the first state title of any kind for the school.

Still, having ink done to commemorate her team's achievement couldn't have hurt Oelschlegel's national credentials, even if a more correct interpretation of the team slogan ("We are in this competition" perhaps?) might have been a little more forgiving for everyone. After all, how many coaches do you know who have school-based tattoos in honor of specific victories?

Here's one you don't see every day: A play drives the lane and elevates for the jam, only to be rejected by an opposing defender. Yet that block doesn't clear the zone, and a chaser comes and cleans up the mess with a slam of his own.

What does one even call that? An alley-oops?

Regardless of terminology, Nick Lyon pulled off the feat in a recent ScoutsFocus showcase, finishing a flush that was started by a teammate and sidetracked by an opponent. All of which goes to reinforce how important it is to never give up on a play.

In fact, that might be the most significant note to make about Lyon, too. The tenacious 6-foot-7 Mount Pleasant (Iowa) Community High forward isn't exactly a top national recruit, as he's flown way, way below the radar thus far. This despite some impressive performances for the talented Iowa Pump N Run AAU squad and a sterling 3.7 GPA, which would seem to make him an easy walk-on candidate at just about any program that wants him.