WHEELING — Prep basketball season is officially right around the corner.

One of the highlights of the area season is the annual Cancer Research Classic, which will celebrate its 12th birthday in 2019.

While the nation’s premier boys basketball teams won’t converge on downtown Wheeling’s WesBanco Arena until Jan. 4 and 5, the work involved in the event has been ongoing since basically when this year’s event concluded.

“We’re in great shape (in terms of the planning and logistics,” event director Dr. Gregory Merrick of the Wheeling Hospital Schiffler Cancer Center, said. “Everything is scheduled and rolling. Everything is in place.”

This event, which will feature 13 games over the course of the two days, will be held at WesBanco Arena for the first time after spending its first 11 years at Wheeling Jesuit’s McDonough Center.

“Obviously, moving to a new venue is a bit stressful, but we, quite simply, outgrew Jesuit,” Merrick said. “This provides us a little bit more of a professional setup. Denny (Magruder) and his team are handling the ticket sales and all of the infrastructure in that regard. We’ve really enjoyed working with them. It’s a beautiful facility and the city of Wheeling has done an outstanding job of renovating. There will be no bad seats in the house.”

One of the aspects that Merrick is hopeful that can continue with the change in venues is the atmosphere that the smaller gymnasium at Jesuit provided.

“We couldn’t accommodate all of the people who wanted to attend,” Merrick said. “We were more than crowded last year and that’s why we had to look for a new venue. Now, we’d like to build on the atmosphere.”

Merrick said a few of the participating teams were disappointed to hear the event was changing sites because of the atmosphere.

To help continue that, the CRC will once again have area marching and pep bands on hand during the course of both days of action. Floor seats will continue and area youth will be permitted onto the floor, in one end, to get an up-close-look at some of the future NBA and Division I basketball stars who will be on hand.

Tickets for the event are currently on sale and can be purchased through WesBanco Arena’s website or by visiting the ticket booth.

“We’re actually ahead of where we were last year at this time in terms of tickets,” Merrick said. “We’re encouraging people to get their tickets early. We’ll have more courtside seats than ever before. It’s a great opportunity to be right near the action.”

As for the on-court product, the CRC is once again rated as one of the premier events in the country by numerous national media outlets.

Helping to fuel that for the CRC is the fact that it of its 13 games, eight are matchups of teams ranked top 20 nationally.

“MaxPreps just put out a piece the other day that said that is unmatched by any other tournament in the country,” Merrick said. “There’s a lot to look forward to.”

The premier game of the weekend is slated for 3 p.m. on Saturday when Montverde takes on La Lumiere.

“Those are two of the best teams in the country and it’s a budding rivalry,” Merrick said.

Merrick indicated this could be Montverde’s best team ever, which is saying something since it started five high major players a year ago and won the Dick’s Sporting Goods National Championship in April.

Montverde, La Lumiere, Findlay Prep, Bishop Gorman and Imhotep, which is located in Philadelphia, are slated to play on both days of the event.

While boys basketball in Ohio doesn’t begin until Nov. 30 and in West Virginia for a few more weeks after that, many of the teams who are coming to the Friendly City have a few games under their belts.

“Findlay Prep has played about five games, the Georgia schools have started and I think Montverde starts this week, too,” Merrick said.

On top of the national influx, Wheeling Central and Wheeling Park will both play in the event and tipoff each day’s action. Park will meet Moon Township of the Pittsburgh area at 1 p.m. on Friday.

Central, meanwhile, will meet Butler, Pa. which features Ethan Morton, who Merrick said “will be the best player Central has ever played against.”

“Both Park and Central have formidable matchups,” Merrick said. “We always try to find good, regional schools that will challenge those teams and help prepare them for their state tournaments.”

To help further wet the appetite of CRC fans, Merrick — via the CRC’s Twitter account — will be asking two trivia questions a week, starting Monday.

“We’ll have a question on Monday, provide that answer and a new question on Thursday and follow that up until the event,” Merrick said. “We’re interested to see who remembers what.”

Though the venue has changed, the purpose of the event — beyond basketball — hasn’t. Using basketball as a vehicle to promote men’s health continues to be one of the chief focuses of the event. Merrick indicated that even more men’s health booths will be set up at the arena this year.

“Another one of the advantages of moving downtown is that we have more room for men’s health and educational forums,” Merrick said.