No. 2 Omaha Westside 63, No. 5 Creighton Prep 61

An 11-0 run in the fourth quarter gave the Omaha Westside boys basketball team just enough of a cushion to survive a furious rally late from Creighton Prep and claim the 2025-26 Metro Holiday Tournament championship Saturday night.

The Warriors were No. 1 in Class A in the first NebPreps Coaches Poll of the season, but they took a week-two loss to an undersized but scrappy Bellevue West team. Since then, the Warriors have reeled off seven straight wins, including four in five days to claim the Metro crown. They also beat third-seeded Papillion-La Vista 59-56 in the semifinals.

“We’ve talked about the last couple weeks becoming a tougher team,” Westside coach Jim Simons said. “I thought the first few weeks of the year, we just weren’t very tough, and Bellevue West really exposed that when they blitzed us the second week. We’ve gotten tougher, and this tournament required that, and everybody knows it’s going to.”

Playing on their home court in front of a standing room-only crowd, the Junior Jays raced out to a 10-3 lead a few minutes into the game. However, junior London Dada put the Warriors on his back, scoring nine points during a 10-2 answer that put the Warriors in front.

Dada, the 6-foot-8 wing who has received offers from Creighton and Nebraska (and who saw coaches from the two in-state high-major programs stop by the Heider Center to watch him during the tournament) finished with a game-high 23 points and a career-high 16 rebounds, including five on the offensive end. After shooting 1-for-12 from 3 in his first three games during the tournament, the junior sharp-shooter went 4-for-6 in the championship and also got to the line frequently, going 9-for-11 at the stripe.

“He’s a lot better player than he showed last night, and this is a new role for London,” Simons said. “Even when London was younger and growing up, London’s kind of never been the guy with this much attention. He was the seventh or eighth man a lot of the time for us last year. He grows three four inches, he had a great summer, and now he’s got a bunch of offers and a lot of attention on him, and I think as much mentally as just growing into that role. He really rebounded well tonight, obviously, and we thought he would.

“He’s too good of a player to play the way he played last night, consistently. But to his credit last night, we’re probably not here if he didn’t make a couple plays late.”

Dada’s co-star for the Warriors was senior Augustana commit Emre Gedik. The 6-foot-7 forward finished with 19 points, five rebounds and three steals. He threw down multiple dunks, including one just before the third quarter buzzer that capped a 9-1 finish to the period and gave the Warriors a 45-43 lead heading into the fourth.

Creighton Prep regrouped during the quarter break and took a 52-48 lead on a 3-pointer from senior Torran Carter-Brown. However, Westside responded with an 11-0 run (six by Gedik, five by Dada) as its stars took over. That included a step-back 3 from Dada with just under two minutes remaining.

“It was two things,” Simons said of the run. “We had to get reconnected defensively; I just thought when things kind of got a little crazy, our defensive concentration was not great. And then obviously offensively, our shot selection was really poor, and it’s loud in here, it’s chaotic, everybody’s competing really hard, and we just had to trust each other and trust what we’re running offensively. We put the ball in the hands of those two guys, and those two guys are good guys to have the ball in their hands late in the game, and they made some plays for us, obviously.”

The run gave Westside a 59-42 lead with about 50 seconds to go, but the Junior Jays didn’t quit. Carter-Brown ended the run with a 3 and went on to score Prep’s final 12 points, the last two coming via a layup with about 7 seconds to play to pull the Junior Jays within one. Westside left the door ajar with some missed free throws, and Carter-Brown tried to drag his team through it.

However, Prep fouled Kai Fredrick with 2.2 to go, he split the free throws to make it a two-point game with the length of the floor to go for Prep, and the Junior Jays didn’t get a shot off in time before the buzzer sounded.

Carter-Brown finished with 14 of his team-high 20 points in the fourth quarter, shooting 4-of-6 from deep. The 5-foot-9 point guard provided a big boost for the Junior Jays since rejoining the team after the end of the first semester, averaging 11.0 points and 4.5 assists in the tournament. Junior Max Jungers added 17 points, nine rebounds and four assists while senior Cooper Knight chipped in 12 points.

Will Preston, the 6-foot-10 senior committed to Hampton, hauled in 12 rebounds, his second double-digit rebounding game of the tournament. He chipped in seven points against Prep and averaged 9.8 rebounds in the tournament.

“Winning in here is obviously a great accomplishment in this environment,” Simons said. “This was definitely not a neutral crowd. The Prep rivalry is great, but to me, more than anything, is for these guys to get over the hump in a championship game. We lost the conference championship game by one possession last year, we lost the district championship game by one possession, we lost the state championship game by one possession, and we were proud of the fact that we were in all of those championship games — not a lot of people could say that — but we kept coming up one possession short, and we’ve talked about that a lot since June and what it takes to win grinder, one-possession games, and so for the kids to be able to experience that, that’s a good thing.

“But at the end of the day, we won this in 2022 and ripped off a great season and went down to Lincoln, and winning this didn’t feel real good in March. What’s the saying? It’s a marathon, not a sprint.”

“It was one of the goals we set. Now we just got to do district champions and state champions – that’s all we’ve got left.”@londondada_’s double-double with 23 points and 15 rebounds led No. 2 Westside past No. 5 Creighton Prep 63-61 for the Metro Conference Tournament title.… pic.twitter.com/9m44NBPAnw

— Hurrdat Sports (@HurrdatSports) January 4, 2026

NebPreps All-Tournament Team

>> MOP — Emre Gedik, Sr. Omaha Westside: 15.5 PPG, 49.0% FG, 7.0 RPG (2.3 ORPG), 1.5 APG, 1.5 SPG

>> Donnie Barfield Jr., Sr., Omaha Westside: 14.3 PPG, 54.8% FG (33.3% 3FG), 2.5 RPG

>> Max Jungers, Jr., Creighton Prep: 15.0 PPG, 47.6% FG (33.3% 3FG), 6.0 RPG, 2.3 APG, 1.8 SPG, 1.0 BPG

>> Bryce Vigness, Jr., Papillion-La Vista: 13.0 PPG, 66.7% FG, 7.7 RPG

>> Major Mosser, Sr., Millard North: 11.7 PPG, 48.1% FG (33.3% 3FG), 100% FT, 7.3 RPG, 1.7 APG