Twenty-five years have passed since he played in the game, but for former East High basketball great Trajan Langdon it sometimes seems like yesterday when he and the T-birds faced mighty Oak Hill Academy of Virginia.
The 1991 championship game of the Great Alaska High School Classic was arguably the most significant high school basketball event in state history — because after that night, the country paid attention to Alaska.
Oak Hill won 61-58, but Langdon captured the moment. A soft-spoken sophomore with college-ready skills, he almost led the T-birds to an improbable win over the nation's eighth-ranked team.
"I think that game helped put me on the map," said Langdon, who went on to an All-America career at Duke, a short stint in the NBA and a long one playing professionally in Europe.
"It helped put my team on the national map. It's something I will never forget. It was the start of something special."
Flashback: East T-birds earn respect: Oak Hill wins 61-58
With Langdon leading the way, East reached the title game after beating two Lower 48 teams on back-to-back nights.
In the first round of the tournament — now called the Alaska Airlines Classic — the T-birds beat Mountain Crest of Hyrum, Utah. It was the first win for an Alaska team against an Outside team in the tournament's three-year history.
In the semifinals East knocked off Torrey Pines of San Diego. That set up the East-Oak Hill championship game, which was played before a standing-room-only crowd at West High.
"It was insane," Langdon recalled recently. "The crowds, the energy, it was kind of surreal.
"All of a sudden you're in the game (and) you're not getting blown out — that was one thing special about Coach White. He could make you feel like you could compete against anybody as long as you stayed together and did the things he asked you to do and played hard. 'You could play with anybody' and he had us believing that.
"When he tells you that you can do it and then you actually go do it, it makes you believe even more. As the game goes we continued to get more confidence and started to believe we could actually win the game. We were right there."
That was the night Langdon discovered just how special he could be on the basketball court. He went on to become a three-time Class 4A Alaska Player of the Year and the state's first McDonald's All-American and had his pick of colleges before choosing Duke.
"I never believed we could play against a nationally ranked team like them," he said. "Then to see that happen as a young kid, it gives you a greater confidence that I'm going to work harder. I want to be like this. I want to work hard, play for East, play against these nationally ranked teams. This shows we can do it.
"It brought some energy to the fans but it also brought a promise to the youth and for me, personally."
The Alaska High School Classic ran from 1989-95 was essentially resurrected in 2005 to provide Alaska teams with a chance to test themselves against Lower 48 competition.
Over the years the new and old Classic produced household names, buzzer beaters and excellent competition.
The 1991 tournament featured future NBA players Langdon, Tremaine Fowlkes and Jeff McInnis. The inaugural tournament in 1989 featured a Harlem Globetrotter in Orlando Antigua.
In 1993, East became the first Alaska team to win the Classic championship. In 2010, Chuck White — who coached at East and then West — became the first coach to win Classic titles with two different teams.
The 2014 tournament brought the late Geno Morgan — a star guard at Alaska Pacific University who went on to coach at East and Palmer — back to town as the coach of Utah's Wasatch Academy. In the championship game, Wasatch and the Dillard Panthers combined for 55 points in the fourth quarter of Dillard's 75-74 win.
This year's Classic begins Thursday and features five Alaska teams — Bartlett, Barrow, Colony, East and West — plus teams from Colorado (Longmont), Arizona (Planet Athlete Academy) and Texas (Pro-Vision Academy).
Van Williams is a freelance writer in Anchorage and a correspondent for the Alaska Sport Activities Association.
Alaska Airlines Classic
West High
Thursday's games
2:30 p.m. — Bartlett vs. Planet Athlete (Ariz.)
4:15 p.m. — Barrow vs. Longmont Christian (Colo.)
6 p.m. — East vs. Pro Vision (Texas)
7:45 p.m. — West vs. Colony