50 After 50: No. 22 Titans look part of state contender, nearly reach ultimate destination

The Illinois High School Association created a second class for boys basketball for the 1971-72 school year. The 2020-21 season would have been the 50th year of the boys basketball small-school tournament. Muddy River Sports is celebrating 50 years of small-school boys basketball by ranking the 50 best teams in Adams, Brown, Pike and Hancock counties since 1972.

No. 22 — 2017-18 West Hancock

HAMILTON, Ill. — Blame John Hughs.

Jeremy Anderson and Chuck Grant deserve some of that, too.

Had it not been for their sincerity, the West Hancock boys basketball team might have added to the program’s state trophy collection in 2018.

After the Titans beat Quincy Notre Dame in the semifinals of the Class 2A Farmington Sectional, West Hancock coach Reno Pinkston felt they had derailed the toughest team in the sectional and were in good position to take another step toward an appearance in Peoria.

Then Hughs, the former Illini West coach who had moved on to Deer Creek-Mackinaw, walked over before the sectional championship and told Pinkston he had a great team and how much he enjoyed watching them play.

It was the kiss of death.

“I was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me, John. Every time someone has complimented my team before the game we’ve lost,’” Pinkston said. “I was like, ‘Here we go.’”

Similar conversations had taken place with Anderson, then the head coach at Macomb, and Grant, the former coach at Monmouth-Roseville, before they handed the Titans their only regular-season losses.

“They all said the same thing,” Pinkston said. “And they all won. We were on their floor or on a neutral floor. So they all are at fault.”

It’s a jinx the Titans couldn’t overcome.

“I don’t believe in that stuff,” Pinkston said. “But I started wondering, ‘Why are you saying this?’”

Ranked No. 2 in the state with a lineup where all the pieces fit together like a puzzle, West Hancock struggled offensively against Deer Creek, losing 51-47 to end a 29-3 campaign that draws raw emotion from Pinkston when he talks about it.

“I honestly thought we had a group there that actually had the chance to play in Peoria,” Pinkston said. “We had the ingredients. We had the recipe to do whatever it takes — we could play fast, we could play a half-court game, we could do a lot of things. So that’s probably as disappointing an ending as I’ve gone through personally.”

So much of that comes back to the commitment the Titans made to Pinkston, the system and each other.

“This was one of those teams that passed the eye test,” Pinkston said. “We had a point guard that was fast and quick in Riley (Langford). You had Logan (Dorethy) who was a presence inside and was a senior who had been in the program a while. Same for Riley. And there was Drake (Hammel), who was the Swiss army knife you could put anywhere.

“We just looked like a basketball team when you say you need guards, you need forwards, you need a center. We had that. I’ve coached all different kinds of teams. This looked like it could be a good basketball team.”

More importantly, they had experience from winning 24 games the season prior.

“They got to the point they knew the system very well,” Pinkston said. “When they put it all together, they were fun to watch.”

To top it off, they were selfless in their pursuit of success, probably none more than Dorethy.

The 6-foot-7 center played the final month of the season on a fractured fibula, pushing aside the pain and discomfort to remain a dominant presence with old-school post moves and the ability to finish on either side of the rim. He averaged 15.9 points, shot 66.5 percent from the field and grabbed 7.9 rebounds. He also blocked 60 shots.

Success has followed him to the collegiate level. After playing at MacMurray before it closed its doors, Dorethy transferred to Eureka College, where he is averaging 15.7 points and 6.4 rebounds this season while shooting 56.2 percent from the field.

Langford was the perfect complement. He shot 48 percent from 3-point range, made 83.9 percent of his free throws and averaged 2.4 steals.

And Hammel, who was a sophomore, averaged 15.4 points before going on to finish his career as a 2,000-point scorer and landing at John Wood Community College, where he helped the Trail Blazers reach the NJCAA Division II national tournament in 2021.

Throw in a 3-point shooter like Kolton Johnson and other complementary pieces and this was a team with potential.

“I could have seen this team playing on TV,” Pinkston said. “It had all the ingredients.”