Barnes’ 38-Point Day Paves The Way As York High Bests McCaskey In Sunday Special To Take Latest Chapter In Age-Old Rivalry, Claim Third-Place Honors In Hagelgans & Veronis Tornado Holiday Classic

Written by: Andy Herr on December 28, 2025

In terms of royalty amongst the ranks of the central Pennsylvania high school basketball landscape, you’d be hard-pressed to find a pair much more qualified than these two.

Between them, they own a grand total of 16 District 3 championships. Beyond that, they are two of the most legendary, much less winningest programs ever produced all-time. And while the stage and magnitude surrounding this latest iteration of their storied rivalry that took place on Sunday afternoon paled in comparison to some of their matchups of old, whenever the York High Bearcats and McCaskey Red Tornado happen to get together, it’s enough to make any old hoop head’s ears perk up and stand at attention.

Yes, while there would be no titles involved here, and the only true implication when it came to winning on this day meant you wouldn’t finish in the basement of the weekend’s tournament, when these two brand names get together, the stars usually shine. Sure enough, even in this chapter, the consolation game of the 2025 Hagelgans & Veronis Tornado Holiday Classic, both York and McCaskey helped to make these 32 minutes of ball feel like anything but a battle relegated for bronze.

Did we mention that the stars came to play in this one?

If not, look no further than McCaskey star sophomore guard, Demere Salisbery, getting the action started on Sunday by proceeding to rattle off the first five points of the afternoon from both beyond and inside the arc, as Salisbery did his part in making it a 5-0 Tornado lead before anyone really had the opportunity to sit down in their seats.

Problem was, that’s exactly when York’s stud, Nasir Barnes, took his turn running with the spotlight.

Even despite seeing the opposition race out to an early lead to begin the afternoon as mentioned, that didn’t seem to deter York High’s junior point guard all that much. Not the least of which came best exemplified by a pullup jumper which preceded a floater in the lane the next trip down the floor, a pair of successive buckets contributed by Barnes that in turn gave the Bearcats their first lead of the contest, 7-5, with all of five minutes still left to played in the opening frame.

Ironically, you’d have to hit the fast forward button all the way to the 3:30 mark of the first quarter for the first McCaskey points tallied by someone not named Demere Salisbery, as a wonderfully-executed baseline out-of-bounds play ended up in an Amir Thompson-Hanson bucket for the Tornado, making it a 10-10 stalemate before York, well, Elijah Minter most specifically, would counter back not long afterwards with back-to-back buckets of his own, these now making it a 16-10 Bearcats’ cushion before the sun would ultimately set on a first quarter of play which saw York High maintaining the 18-15 advantage up on the scoreboard over their hosts inside this consolation contest.

That said, if the first eight minutes hadn’t already proven to the McCaskey troops that they sorely needed to keep a lid on the exploits of one Nasir Barnes, rest assured that Barnes personally reminded them of that throughout.

Even taking his efforts found from within the lane which proved fruitful following the lefty guard bullying his defender down low into want became a chip shot field goal of his doing which made it a 25-20 York lead inside the second quarter’s infantile stages, Barnes would later proceed to bury two back-breaking triples in successive fashion near the five-minute mark of the quarter, as this personal six-point Barnes jaunt awarded the Bearcats their largest lead of the day, 33-22, with the McCaskey ship starting to take on its first signs of water.

Good thing Salisbery and his mates brought the buckets with them at least.

In a way that best personified the back-and-forth, breakneck type of style that Sunday’s second quarter had suddenly started to divulge into, that somewhat cozy York High lead of double figures was just as quickly wiped down to a modest five-point gap at 33-28 following a take to the tin by you guessed it, Demere Salisbery, as Salisbery helped set the table for another Tornado underclassman, Kyle Brown, to follow suit as the McCaskey junior’s trifecta with 90 seconds left before the half cut York’s advantage down to the slimmest of margins, 36-35, with the eventual champion of the game’s first 16 minutes anything but carved into stone.

And while an old-school three-point play authored inside the final minute of the second by way of another of the McCaskey juniors, Ja’Loney Porter, truly made it a stalemate considering the 40-40 score, a late York High bucket would ultimately prove to be the difference come the intermission as the Bearcats, while having yet to actually surrender control of the scoreboard to McCaskey since the opening Salisbery-led charge out of the gates, possessed the 42-40 advantage at the break, all while despite owning a double figure lead a mere handful of minutes just prior to the first half horn going off all the same.

Here though, with the promise of a brand-new half getting set to commence, the opportunity was sitting right there on a silver platter for either one of these two teams to conjure up something if the foremost task at hand was to garner some kind of breathing room away from the opposition.

For that, the orange-clad guests would be the first to bite at the apple.

Remember the name Nasir Barnes? McCaskey certainly won’t – and that’s if he doesn’t happen to appear in their collective nightmares either for the next few nights, mind you.

Well, it turns out that giving the ball to York High’s junior stud is a pretty sound mode of transportation if the goal is to travel out of dodge unscathed.

Case in point, a pair of Barnes buckets scored through contact over the course of back-to-back Bearcats’ trips down the floor to then see the York High lead swell back upwards into double figures, 60-49, as Barnes was well on his way to finishing with an eye-popping 38-point day at the office to his credit in pacing all scorers found in this one.

Sure enough, despite both teams trading buckets with one another inside the final 1:18 of the third frame following the second of Barnes’ hoops through harm nonetheless, that 11-point margin would remain alive and well prior to entering the final period as York High led McCaskey by a 62-51 count with all of eight minutes left to be played.

But even when things seemed their darkest for McCaskey, even when it didn’t seem as if they could find a scoring punch equal to that of Nasir Barnes who was flirting with the very real idea of a 40-point contest, the Tornado themselves happen to have an ace up their collective sleeves too.

While Demere Salisbery’s day prior to the final quarter on Sunday against York might’ve seemed somewhat quiet compared to the usual explosive performance that the Lancaster-Lebanon League audience at large has now grown accustomed to seeing from the highly talented McCaskey sophomore on a nightly basis, rest assured that he wouldn’t go away quietly in this one either.

Needless to say, without burying the lede any further, Salisbery himself would turn in quite a showing once the dust finally settled on this one as well, netting himself a team-high 35-point showing to lead all Tornado scorers, with no one else in a McCaskey uniform coming within 21 points of his reach.  

And while the numbers in totality were glamorous and all, they would still feel somewhat hallow perhaps in the event that McCaskey would finish with fewer points scored come the end of the day against these Bearcats. With that in mind, Salisbery proceeded to put foot to floorboard as the fourth quarter took shape as an eight-point Salisbery-led salvo, capped off by a steal and finish in transition, clipped York High’s once-comfortable lead down to a 70-63 difference with 3:50 left to play.

Yet even when York would build their lead back up to a double-digit plateau at 73-63 in the aftermath of a Dawone Hodges triple for a bucket which the Bearcats sorely needed at the time, Salisbery just kept pushing the envelope for his troops.

In fact, while all on the heels of Salisbery’s efforts exclusively once again, McCaskey would trim the gap down to the fewest it had been in quite some time, 79-74, with just 40 seconds remaining following another Salisbery steal and finish that concluded at the cup.   

However, the hill would prove to be far too steep and far too short in terms of the respective chore required of McCaskey needed to try and overcome.

And while the foul line would’ve easily awarded Nasir Barnes a 40-point day in actuality had it not been for some visits to the charity stripe which had gone by the wayside at times earlier in the contest, there were no freebies bigger nor more important than the four in which Barnes calmly knocked down over two straight trips inside of the game’s final 32 seconds to ultimately put this game on ice and draw the curtains closed on any sort miraculous Tornado comeback bid as York High was able to hold off a very game McCaskey crew, 85-76, to take third place in McCaskey’s holiday tournament this year on Sunday afternoon in Lancaster.

From here, both of these central PA franchises will take their talents back to their respective leagues, the YAIAA and L-L, as each hope to chase down league playoff bids, if not section titles even, over the next month and change. If not that, both also hope to return back to the land of milk and honey known as the District 3 playoffs come late February as both the Bearcats and Tornado currently sit outside the cutline in the 6A ranks if the postseason happened to start tomorrow for some inexplicable reason.

But no matter what shakes out for the rest of 2025-26, the future looks incredibly bright for each of these two powerhouses. With a bevy of underclassmen littered across both rosters, many of whom stole the show in this contest, there’s ample reason to believe that the days ahead figure to be brighter than the days of late for both York High and McCaskey collectively. In other words, yes, don’t get used to seeing these two duke it out for any sort of bronze medal of the sort moving forward as they did on Sunday on the McCaskey campus. They might both be playing each other in the year(s) to come, but for far, far bigger prizes if either of them has their way.   

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