Marcus Hill and AJ Storr grew up together in Rockford, even playing briefly on the same Rockford Ambassadors AAU team under Reggie Biffle.
They enrolled at rival high schools, but never squared off against each other in the Big Northern at Rockford Christian and Rockford Lutheran.
Apparently they had to wait for ESPN. The two will be against one another on the court for the first time at 2:15 p.m. Saturday, with Hill coming to Kansas as a starter for N.C. State and Storr playing for the No. 10-ranked Jayhawks.
“It’s nice,” Biffle said. “It’s nice for them. It’s nice for the city. It lets people know we have those caliber of players here. They just get overlooked a lot.
“I just hope it’s a good game and they play well. We can’t lose as long as they play well.”
Saturday will be an historic day in Rockford basketball. Rockford hasn’t seen the likes of this in 34 years. Not since Boylan’s Danny Jones took his epic NIC-10 battles against Hononegah’s Jim Shikenjanski to the Big Ten. The two four-year starters overlapped perfectly, with Jones becoming Wisconsin’s all-time leading scorer (he still ranks No. 5 in Badger history) and Shikenjanski averaging 7.5 points and 3.3 rebounds in 117 games for Minnesota.
Since then, a half-dozen Rockford players have started for a power-conference program ― Guilford’s Aaron Robinson (Minnesota, 2001-05), Freeport’s Jamal Meeks (Indiana, 1988-92), Jefferson’s Frank Richards (Kansas State, 2002-04), Boylan’s Damir Krupalija (Illinois, 1998-2002), Boylan’s Joe Tulley (DePaul, 1999-2003) and Hononegah’s Ryan Hoover (Notre Dame, 1992-96) ― but never against a second Rockford-area player.
Krupalija did have 11 points in 11 minutes off the bench in a 92-76 win March 8, 2002, in the Big Ten Tournamament over Minnesota. But Robinson played only three minutes in that game. In the two earlier games that year, Krupalija was injured and didn’t play.
For 30 years, Rockford basketball contributions have usually been to teams that are trying to crash the current royalty. Freeport’s Willie Veasley set a school record for career starts for a Butler team that reached the NCAA title game; Auburn’s Fred VanVleet became a two-time Missouri Conference Valley player of the year for Wichita State; and Hononegah’s David Brown led the Mid-American Conference in scoring for Western Michigan. Even East’s Sincere Parker topped 30 points in three straight games for Saint Louis last season.
But these two are playing for blue-blood teams. And playing well. Hill leads N.C. State (7-3) in scoring, averaging 13.0 points. Storr’s 8.4 points rank fifth for Kansas (7-2).
“They’ve known each other since they were little. That’s the other nice part,” said Rockford Christian coach Isaiah Johnson, who coached Hill in high school and had two sons who played with Hill. “They knew each other growing up, but I think they are really going to go after each other when it’s time to play. They are both competitors. It should be a fun game.”
Neither really were stars in Rockford. Storr’s sister Ambranette, who is one year older, was a first-team All-State player at Lutheran as a sophomore, but the family then moved to Kankakee. Storr, a 6-7 junior guard, wound up playing at five high schools in four different states, but has been a college standout in one-year stops at St. John’s and Wisconsin before coming to Kansas via the transfer portal this year.
“We knew AJ could shoot the basketball,” Rockford Christian’s Johnson said. “When he was younger, oh, man, he loved to shoot the basketball. He was only in Rockford that freshman year, but we knew he was going to be good. It helped that he got that size as he got older.”
Hill, a 6-4 junior, started in junior college, leading the nation in scoring before moving to Bowling Green as a junior. He led the MAC in scoring (20.5 points) last year and is now at N.C. State, which reached the Final Four last year.
“Marcus graduated at a bad time,” Johnson said. “With COVID and older guys getting extra years, it put more stress on the younger kids coming in. College coaches are going to stick with a fifth-year or sixth-year senior over trying to bring in a freshman or a sophomore. We are just now getting over that, so now high school kids have a better chance.
“But Marcus put in the work. When he graduated, I wouldn’t say he was frail, but he had a slighter build. He put on muscle. He got stronger. He worked on his shot some more. Marcus was one of the best passers I’ve coached. People talk about his scoring now, but he could really pass the ball. He grew up a bit, started playing better defense. He just matured.”
Into a star for a team coming off the Final Four. And now he meets another star for another team used to going to Final Four. And both are from Rockford.
Tune in. The rest of Rockford will.
Matt Trowbridge is a Rockford Register Star sports reporter. Email him at mtrowbridge@rrstar.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, at @MattTrowbridge.
