Knoxville Blue Bullets Boys Basketball: 2026-27 Schedule and History
Knoxville Blue Bullets · Knoxville, Illinois · Lincoln Trail Conference
Coach: Tom Garriott · All-time: 1,426-1,207 (.542) · 113 recorded seasons
Knoxville have been playing boys basketball since 1909-10 and have won 1,426 games. In 113 seasons they have never won a sectional championship. Not one — no sectional, no super-sectional, no state finals appearance, and no district title from the pre-1936 era either.
Seven regionals, and nothing beyond
Regional titles (7): 1951-52, 1976-77, 1986-87, 1987-88, 1988-89, 1989-90, 1990-91.
Five of the seven came in five consecutive seasons between 1986 and 1991. Before that there were two, twenty-five years apart. Since 1990-91 there have been none — thirty-five years without a regional title.
We checked the whole table row by row rather than trusting a summary, because a first automated pass through these pages produced a phantom Knoxville third-place finish that does not exist. It came from a different sport’s table. The Titles and Place columns here are as bare as they look.
A school that has never won a sectional in anything we cover
This is the finding that puts the record in context, and it holds across three sports.
- Boys basketball: 1,426 wins, seven regionals, no sectional
- Girls basketball: 688 wins, eleven regionals, no sectional
- Volleyball: 649 wins, eleven regionals, no sectional
Nearly 2,800 wins and twenty-nine regional championships across three programmes, and the round after the regional has never once fallen. That is not a criticism of anyone — it is a genuinely unusual pattern, and nobody appears to have written it down before.
The record stops in 2022
Knoxville’s IHSA filing has a hole at the end. The last row is 2022-23, and it carries a coach’s name with no win-loss figure. The last season with an actual record is 2021-22. Four seasons are effectively missing.
What we do have is a strong finish to the documented era: 21-9 in 2019-20, 13-3 in the shortened 2020-21, and 27-6 in 2021-22, all under Erik Hughs, whose five-year total of 78-60 confirms that 2022-23 is genuinely empty rather than mis-keyed.
Twenty-seven wins in the last documented season is the best Knoxville figure on record in decades. What has happened since, the public record does not say.
How it compares to Knoxville football
The football Blue Bullets are 1-2 this autumn, having lost 22-20 at home to Hamilton/Warsaw in Week 3. Basketball is much the deeper programme historically — 113 seasons against a shorter football record, and a win total no area school outside Galesburg, Wethersfield and Princeville approaches.
2026-27 schedule
Around eight 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.
Finding Knoxville online
This is the worst name collision in the area. Search “Knoxville basketball” and you will get the University of Tennessee, the city of Knoxville, Knoxville Halls High School and the TSSAA — ten results, none of them from Illinois. Knoxville, Illinois is a town of about 3,000 in Knox County, five miles east of Galesburg. Searching “Blue Bullets” is the only reliable way to find this school. There is also a Knoxville in Iowa with its own high school programme, which shows up in Illinois searches regularly.
Coverage of Lincoln Trail basketball is thin in general. MaxPreps carries schedules and scores when schools update them, which is inconsistent at this level. The IHSA’s record pages are authoritative but frequently years behind. No local outlet runs a nightly area scoreboard in winter.
We will post results on this page through the season. If you have a score before we do, send it and it goes up with credit.
What we are still chasing
- Season records for 2022-23, 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26
- When Tom Garriott took over from Erik Hughs
- The full 2026-27 schedule and roster
Where Knoxville Blue Bullets rank in the area
Across the fourteen boys basketball programmes we cover, Knoxville Blue Bullets sit third by all-time wins (1,426), eighth by winning percentage (.542) and seventh by regional championships (seven).
The nearest programmes by wins are Wethersfield Flying Geese above (1,455) and Princeville Princes below (1,411).
The sectional round is the wall. Knoxville Blue Bullets have won seven regional titles and lost the sectional every time — seven exits at the same stage, and no sectional championship in the programme’s history.
No state finals trophy. Seven area programmes have one; this is not among them.
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 | 2,633 |
| Recorded seasons | 113 |
| Average wins per season | 12.6 |
| Average games per season | 23 |
| Regional titles | 7 |
| Share of all area regionals | 5.1% |
| Years since last regional | 35 |
35 years is a long time. A player starting at Knoxville this winter was not born the last time the programme won a regional, and neither were their older siblings.
The oldest programme without a sectional
Knoxville began playing in 1909-10. In the 113 seasons since, no team has won a sectional championship — the longest such run of any programme in this coverage area, and among the longest in the region. Galva have gone a century without one; Knoxville have gone thirteen years longer.
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 — a 30-coach read sums exactly to 1,426-1,207 across 113 years; an earlier 29-line read failed the check and was discarded. Coaching and schedule detail from MaxPreps team pages, retrieved September 2026. Corrections posted the same day.
