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Bureau Valley Storm Boys Basketball: 2026-27 Schedule and History

Bureau Valley Storm · Manlius, Illinois · Lincoln Trail Conference

Coach: Jason Marquis · All-time: 445-262 (.629) · Three state trophies

Bureau Valley finished third in the Illinois Class A state finals three years running — 2000, 2001 and 2002. No other programme in this coverage area, in any sport, has taken a trophy home from three consecutive state finals.

The Bickett years

All three came under Brad Bickett:

  • 1999-00 — third in Class A, 26-6, beating Riverton 65-62 in the third-place game
  • 2000-01 — third in Class A, 33-2
  • 2001-02 — third in Class A, 31-4

Thirty-three wins and two defeats in the middle year. Ninety wins and twelve losses across the three seasons combined. For a consolidated school in a village of a few hundred people, that is the high-water mark of area basketball in the last fifty years.

There is a predecessor footnote too: Buda (Western), now part of the Bureau Valley district, finished fourth in Class A in 1975-76 — the same state finals in which ROWVA finished second.

The full record

Regional titles (12): 1995-96, 1996-97, 1997-98, 1998-99, 1999-00, 2000-01, 2001-02, 2003-04, 2004-05, 2014-15, 2017-18, 2018-19.

Sectional titles (4): 1999-00, 2000-01, 2001-02, 2018-19.

Super-sectional titles and state finals (3): 1999-00, 2000-01, 2001-02.

Seven straight regionals from 1995-96 through 2001-02, then a decade of nothing, then three more in five years to 2018-19.

The messiest record book in the area

This one needs a serious warning attached, because the numbers above are less complete than they look.

Bureau Valley’s last IHSA row is 2018-19. The last row carrying an actual win-loss figure is 2012-13. Thirteen years of results are absent. Specifically:

  • Three regional-winning seasons are filed with no record at all — 2014-15, 2017-18 and 2018-19, the last of which also won a sectional
  • 2010-11 and 2013-14 are blank
  • 1987-88, 1989-90, 2015-16 and 2016-17 have no row whatsoever
  • The first coaching block, 1985-86 to 1994-95, carries no coach’s name

So 445-262 is not an all-time record. It is a partial sample ending in 2013, and we would rather say so than let it be quoted as fact.

Where the programme is now

Honestly, we cannot tell you from the record. The last documented seasons are 12-15 in 2011-12 and 19-10 in 2012-13, both under Jason Marquis, who is listed as head coach again for 2026-27 with six assistants — one of the larger staffs in the conference.

What we can say is that the 2018-19 team won a regional and a sectional. Beyond that, the public record is silent.

How it compares to Bureau Valley’s other sports

The football Storm are 1-2 this autumn, having lost 41-16 at home to Abingdon-Avon in Week 3. Basketball is the school’s stronger historic sport by a distance — three state trophies against a football programme with no comparable run.

The volleyball programme has the same filing problem as basketball: 338-194 on paper, eight regionals, but the record stops in 2018-19. Whatever happened administratively at Bureau Valley around 2019, it affected more than one sport.

2026-27 schedule

Around nine games are posted for 2026-27. IHSA boys practice is scheduled to open Monday, November 9.

We will publish the full schedule on this page as soon as it is posted, and update results through the season.

The school

Bureau Valley Community Unit School District 340 was formed in 1995 from the consolidation of Buda (Western), Manlius, Sheffield, Walnut and Wyanet, in Bureau County about fifty miles north-east of Galesburg. The high school is in Manlius, which is why the IHSA files the programme under that town rather than under Bureau Valley.

What we are still chasing

  • Every season result since 2013. No public source we have found reports them completely.
  • Win-loss records for the 2014-15, 2017-18 and 2018-19 title teams
  • Where Brad Bickett went after the three-trophy run
  • The full 2026-27 schedule and roster

Where Bureau Valley Storm rank in the area

Across the fourteen boys basketball programmes we cover, Bureau Valley Storm sit ninth by all-time wins (445), second by winning percentage (.629) and fourth by regional championships (twelve).

The nearest programmes by wins are Ridgewood (AlWood) above (804) and Stark County Rebels below (361).

Bureau Valley Storm have converted four of those twelve regional titles into a sectional championship, losing at that stage eight times.

The three state trophies in the cabinet are among only eight won by area boys basketball programmes in total.

Full comparisons for every programme, plus conference structure, season dates and how the Illinois postseason works, are on our area boys basketball guide.

By the numbers

Games on record 707
Recorded seasons 25
Average wins per season 17.8
Average games per season 28
Regional titles 12
Share of all area regionals 8.8%
Years since last regional 7
Calculated from the IHSA record. Averages use recorded seasons only, so where the file has blank years the true per-season figures will differ.

7 years since the last regional puts Bureau Valley in the middle of the area — recent enough to be remembered, long enough to matter.

Three trophies in three years

The 1999-2002 run remains the densest concentration of success by any area programme in any sport. Ninety wins, twelve defeats, three consecutive state third-place finishes. Nothing before or since in this coverage area matches it, and the record book cannot tell you what has happened at Bureau Valley in the thirteen years since it stopped being updated.

Send us results

Rosters, schedules, scores, corrections, photographs — send them and they go up with credit. We correct errors the same day we learn about them.


All-time record, championship years and state finishes from the IHSA’s per-school record page at ihsa.org, with the school total arithmetically verified against its individual season rows — the coach subtotals sum exactly to the printed 445-262 across 25 recorded years, and all three third-place finishes were corroborated against the IHSA March Madness archive. Coaching and schedule detail from MaxPreps team pages, retrieved September 2026. Corrections posted the same day.

C. Jackson Cowart

C. Jackson Cowart is a sports writer and editor whose work has appeared in ESPN, Forbes, Front Office Sports and Advance Local publications. He edits Muddy River Sport's coverage of high school and college athletics in Galesburg, Monmouth, Knox County and the surrounding communities of west-central Illinois. He works remotely from Washington state. Muddy River Sport's Friday night coverage depends on people who are actually in the bleachers — coaches, parents, scorekeepers and photographers across west-central Illinois who send in scores, results and photos as games end. If that's you, we want to hear from you: [email protected]

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