It would seem difficult to surpass such a high billing, but this year's Classic held last weekend over the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday, did just that.

Ohio Girls Basketball Report organizer and director of the Classic, Tom Jenkins, expected this year's version to be bigger and better than last years and it did not disappoint.

"As good as last year's was, the general consensus among the college scouts and high school coaches here this year was that they didn't believe it could get any better," Jenkins said.  "When asked, most of them thought it was better.  That's not to say last year was bad, because it was one of the nation's top three high school events."

Off the success of last year, even more scouts and fans attended this year's Classic than last year's and a year ago, the first-year event drew an average crowd of 1,200 to the 1,800-seat Reese Center for the 20 games.  The event also hosted more than 80 college scouts.  Those numbers grew this year, although an exact number won't be known for a couple of weeks.

"The people through the door the first day was an increase of 50 percent over last year's first day," said Hiland girls coach Dave Schlabach and one of the event's co-organizers.  "We topped last year's number of college scouts (over 100 this year)."

According to Jenkins, the event's attendance grew by about 30 percent.

I was projecting a 30-percent growth in the event, monetarily and people-wise," he said.  "I think we're pretty close to that."

Part of the reason for the Classic's success, according to Jenkins, is that it is run not only as a sporting event, but also as entertainment, with halftime shows and between-game activities.

"It's like a production, in that we plan everything, except the outcomes of the games, from the time people turned left into the parking lot to the time they turned right out of it to go back home," he said.

"Three-and-a-half years ago, when Dave and I started planning everything, it was a joint venture between the Hiland girls basketball program, Hiland athletic program and Ohio Girls Basketball Report," Jenkins said. "(This year's event) belongs to the community of Berlin because of how the people here have embraced it and have provided for it."

On the court, this year's Classic was a big success with many of Ohio's top teams on the marquee.  Fans saw three defending state champions, two nationally ranked teams and likely all four state champions for this year.

Jenkins said this year's field may be the one area of the Classic that simply cannot get bigger and better.

"I don't know if we can top this year based on where these teams were ranked in the first (Associated Press) poll," Jenkins said.  "We picked the teams 14 months ago and of the 31, 21 were ranked in the top 20 in their respective divisions and 16 of those were in the top 10.  We had three No. 1s here.  That will be a hard feat to top next year, but we're extremely excited about the field we have coming in."

Because a handful of games this year were blowouts for one reason or another, Jenkins said he will be working to improve the quality of the games in the future.

"One thing I'd like to prevent is the competitive balance being upset by player move-ins, move-outs and transfers," Jenkins said.  "To solve that issue, what we want to start requiring is that should one of those occurrences happen, we could have the flexibility to try and reroute the matchup or void the contract of the weaker team."

Getting strong teams is not an issue, however, as Jenkins said, requests from teams to be involved are flowing in.

"The first year was such a success that we have gone from inviting teams to letting them know, 'you have been selected,'" he said.  "It's nice being able to select rather than invite."

On or off the court, expectations will continue to rise as long as the Classic stays around, which could be for a long time.  "It will be even better next year," Schlabach said.  "It will continue to grow as word continues to spread out about it to more and more people."