General
This is an opinion column.
Now that the work is done, we can start the debate. Now that the Hoover boys basketball team has answered every challenge en route to a 35-0 season and a third straight state championship, we can ask the question.
Did we just watch the greatest high school basketball team in the history of the state of Alabama?
First, some facts.
The AHSAA added the 7A classification for the state’s largest high schools for the 2014-15 academic year. No 7A boys team had run the table to secure the trophy with the blue map – until Hoover. No boys team in the highest classification had completed an unbeaten season since the 2002-03 John Carroll High School team of Ronald Steele and DeMarre Carroll – until Hoover.
Since the state’s first integrated basketball playoffs in 1969, only three teams in the state’s highest classification had ever run the table for an entire season. That ’03 John Carroll team coached by Marty Smith went 36-0. The 1995-96 West End team coached by Robert “Rah Rah” Scott went 30-0. The 1990-91 Central-Tuscaloosa team coached by Roosevelt Sanders finished 31-0.
Then came Hoover.
That’s it. That’s the list. Of the 12 undefeated boys champions in state history in any classification, only nine have been spotless since integration. Only four of those teams played at the level reserved for the schools with the largest enrollments, which allows them to build the best facilities, hire the best coaches and enjoy the support of the biggest booster clubs and fan bases.
Though if you spent the last week at Legacy Arena for the AHSAA State Finals, you know that excellent coaches and passionate fans populate every level from 1A to 7A. Give a special shout-out to the supporters of the Brilliant girls and Plainview boys coach Cade Willingham. Each team came up short in its championship game, but both represented their schools and their communities in a first-class manner.
They weren’t alone in that distinction, but Scott Ware’s Hoover boys stood the tallest, literally and figuratively. In a title game tighter than many expected, towering center DeWayne Brown finished with 14 points, 16 rebounds and five blocks despite foul trouble. He also helped hold Florence star Jalen Chandler, who scored a dazzling 41 points in the semifinals, to nine points.
When Florence exerted the kind of game pressure the Bucs have rarely felt in a fourth quarter, twice cutting a 14-point lead to five, Brown tipped in a missed free throw to beat back the challenge for good.
Silky swingman Salim London stepped up as he usually does in big games, hitting big shots inside and out to finish with 18 points, four steals and two assists. Jarett Fairley, the third member of Hoover’s Big Three core, hit a huge pressure-release trey late in the game. He led the Bucs with 21 points.
“They pushed us,” said Ware, who pushed all the right buttons himself at crunch time. “We haven’t been pushed a lot this year.”
Now comes the push and pull, the back and forth, the great debate about the greatest ever. Hoover has to figure prominently in the debate for reasons that go beyond the record the Bucs built and the records they set.
They have the talent. Brown has signed with Tennessee, London with UAB. Fairley and other teammates will play college ball as well. But talent alone doesn’t go undefeated, especially against a schedule that included games against opponents from multiple states, including on that January trip for an in-season tournament in Alaska.
The Bucs took on and took down all comers because the talent put in the work and it was led by an elite coach in Ware. He joins Bucky McMillan as the only coaches in state history on the boys’ side to win three straight state championships in the highest classification. McMillan, who has continued his great work at Samford, led Mountain Brook to 7A titles in 2017, 2018 and 2019 – after going back-to-back in 6A in 2013 and 2014 before 7A was created.
So there is another milestone for Ware and Hoover to chase, five total titles at the highest level.
None of them ran the table, but McMillan certainly coached great teams with great players like Trendon Watford and Colby Jones at Mountain Brook. It’s still hard to find a high school team here led by two better players than John Carroll’s Steele, whose certain NBA future was derailed by injuries during his college career at Alabama, and Carroll, who played 11 NBA seasons. They won back-to-back state titles in 2003 and 2004.
Old-timers will tell you none of these modern teams compares to Parker High School in 1969. In the first integrated basketball playoffs in Alabama history, that team completed a 33-1 season to win the state title. The Thundering Herd featured two stars in Wendell Hudson and Allen Murphy, each of whom made history.
Hudson went on to become the first black scholarship athlete at Alabama and was named the 1973 SEC player of the year. Murphy, who was told incorrectly during his recruitment that Alabama would never start five black players, later signed with Louisville. He started and starred for three seasons with the Cardinals, earning first-team all-conference honors all three years. His college career culminated with a 1975 Final Four semifinal loss to UCLA in John Wooden’s last season.
Of course, it’s difficult to compare eras, to separate that Parker team from West End 1996, John Carroll 2003, Mountain Brook 2019 and Ware’s latest, greatest Hoover team.
Which team is the best of the best? It’s as impossible to determine as it is irresistible to discuss. Rank them however you like, but there’s no debating this point: This Hoover team has earned its place on the short list of the greatest high school basketball teams in Alabama history. These Bucs will be undefeated forever.
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