Area Boys Basketball 2026-27: Every Team, Records and State History
Boys basketball across Galesburg, Monmouth, Knox County and the Lincoln Trail Conference, Illinois
In March 1913, Galesburg beat Peoria Manual 37-36 and won the Illinois state basketball championship. It remains the only state title won by a boys basketball team in this coverage area, and it is one of eight state trophies these fourteen programmes have brought home in a combined thousand-plus seasons.
The 2026-27 season starts in November. Here is where every area programme stands before it does.
The fourteen programmes
| Team | Conference | All-time | Pct |
|---|---|---|---|
| Galesburg Silver Streaks | Western Big 6 | 1,915-1,125-1 | .630 |
| Wethersfield Flying Geese | Lincoln Trail | 1,455-1,130 | .563 |
| Knoxville Blue Bullets | Lincoln Trail | 1,426-1,207 | .542 |
| Princeville Princes | Lincoln Trail | 1,411-844 | .626 |
| Galva Wildcats | Lincoln Trail | 1,281-1,113 | .535 |
| Annawan Braves | Lincoln Trail | 1,245-864 | .590 |
| ROWVA/Williamsfield Cougars | Lincoln Trail | 898-863 | .510 |
| Bureau Valley Storm | Lincoln Trail | 445-262 | .629 |
| Stark County Rebels | Lincoln Trail | 361-326 | .525 |
| Monmouth-Roseville Titans | Three Rivers West | 352-215 | .621 |
| Abingdon-Avon Tornadoes | Lincoln Trail | 263-162 | .619 |
| United Red Storm | Lincoln Trail | 250-359 | .411 |
| West Central Heat | Lincoln Trail | 133-306 | .303 |
| Ridgewood Spartans | Lincoln Trail | filed separately* | — |
The state trophies
Eight, across seven programmes and 112 years.
Galesburg have seven of them. The 1912-13 team went 17-1 under E.W. Hayes and won the championship. The year before, they finished second. They were runners-up again in 1930-31 at 25-4, then third in 1958-59 at 29-2 under John Thiel, then runners-up twice more under Thiel in 1965-66 and 1967-68, both times at 27-3. The last trip was 1997-98, when Mike Miller’s team went 30-3 and lost the final to Whitney Young 61-56.
Nobody else in the area has more than one — except Bureau Valley, who did something stranger. The Storm finished third in Class A three years running: 1999-00, 2000-01 and 2001-02, all under Brad Bickett, including a 33-2 season in the middle of it. Three consecutive state trophies is a run this region has not seen before or since.
Annawan were runners-up in Class 1A in 2017-18 at 31-4, losing the final to Okawville 59-48 — and Alex Coppejans, who coached that team, is still coaching the Braves. They also finished fourth in 2008-09.
ROWVA finished second in Class A in 1975-76, going 28-3 under Bob Meredith and losing the final to Mt. Pulaski by a single point, 59-58. In that same state finals, Buda (Western) — now part of Bureau Valley — finished fourth.
Monmouth High School, before the consolidation with Roseville, finished second in Class A in 1981-82 at 31-3 under Mike Mueller.
Two more programmes reached the Elite Eight without medalling. Williamsfield went 28-3 in 1996-97 and won a regional, sectional and super-sectional before the run ended. Princeville did the same in 1984-85 at 28-3, beating Dakota 57-56 in the super-sectional.
Where things stand now
The most recent seasons on file tell a different story from the all-time table.
Abingdon-Avon went 29-4 last season under Cory Link — the best record in the area and a considerable distance clear of it. Annawan were 20-7, their third straight 20-win season. Galesburg were 18-13 in Taylor Thiel’s first year, a sharp improvement on the 11-21 and 11-22 that preceded it.
At the other end, West Central have won 10 games in three seasons — 3-27, 1-30 and 6-24 — and are the only programme in this group with no IHSA hardware of any kind. Not a regional, not a district, nothing, in eighteen recorded seasons. That is a real fact about a real programme and we would rather state it than leave it out.
A problem with the record book
Before anyone quotes the numbers above, one warning.
These IHSA records are built from what schools submit, and half of these schools have stopped submitting. The gaps are severe:
- ROWVA — nothing since 2016-17. Nine seasons missing.
- Bureau Valley — the last row is 2018-19, but the last row carrying an actual win-loss figure is 2012-13. Thirteen years of data absent, including three regional-winning seasons filed with no record attached.
- Stark County — nothing since 2019-20.
- AlWood — eight straight seasons carry a coach’s name and no record. Last real figure: 2015-16.
- Knoxville — last win-loss on file is 2021-22.
- Williamsfield — 63 seasons of rows, 27 with a record, nothing since 2005-06.
So when you see a school’s all-time record quoted anywhere, including here, understand that for six of these fourteen it is a snapshot from years ago rather than a current mark. We will say which is which on every team page.
The season ahead
IHSA boys basketball practice is scheduled to open Monday, November 9. We flag that as provisional — the date comes from a school-hosted copy of the IHSA’s five-year calendar, and that document is demonstrably out of date on football. We are confirming it with the IHSA directly.
The earliest 2026-27 game we have found on any area schedule is Galva, on November 23. Schedules are being loaded unevenly: Monmouth-Roseville have 24 games posted, Galva 27, while Annawan currently show two and Ridgewood three. That is a posting lag rather than a short season, and we will publish full schedules on the team pages as they appear.
The state finals are at State Farm Center in Champaign, where they will stay through 2029. Regional, sectional, super-sectional and state final dates for March 2027 have not yet been published by the IHSA.
What we are still chasing
- Confirmed first practice and first contest dates from the IHSA
- 2027 state series dates and assignments
- Full 2026-27 schedules for the smaller Lincoln Trail schools
- Whether the Lincoln Trail Conference splits basketball into divisions — the conference’s own page publishes this through an embedded spreadsheet we cannot read
- Head coach confirmation at Stark County, Princeville and Wethersfield, where two people are each listed as head coach
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 records, championship years and state finishes from the IHSA’s per-school record pages (ihsa.org/data/school/records), cross-checked against the IHSA champions and March Madness archives. Every school total was arithmetically verified against its individual season rows. Coaching and schedule information from MaxPreps team pages, retrieved September 2026.
