Knoxville Blue Bullets Girls Basketball: 2026-27 Schedule and History
Knoxville Blue Bullets · Knoxville, Illinois · Lincoln Trail Conference
Coach: Dean Axcell · All-time: 688-500 (.579) · 45 recorded seasons
Knoxville girls basketball won eleven regional championships in twenty-three years and then stopped appearing in the record altogether. The last season the IHSA has on file is 2021-22.
Eleven regionals, no sectional
Regional titles (11): 1997-98, 2000-01, 2006-07, 2008-09, 2010-11, 2012-13, 2014-15, 2015-16, 2016-17, 2017-18, 2019-20.
Sectional titles: none. State finals: none. The Place column is empty in every row of the table.
Five regionals in six years between 2014 and 2020 is a genuinely strong run. Reaching the sectional round eleven times and losing it eleven times is the other half of the same record.
A note on our own process: a first automated read of the IHSA pages produced a Knoxville “third place, 2006-07” that does not exist — it had been pulled from another sport’s table. We re-read the whole thing row by row. There are no state finishes here.
The team was good when the record stopped
This is what makes the filing gap frustrating. Knoxville’s last three documented seasons read 28-3, then 27-5, then 19-11, all under Dean Axcell, with a 10-6 pandemic-shortened year in between.
A 28-3 season and a 27-5 season back to back, a regional title in 2019-20 — and then nothing. Four seasons, 2022-23 through 2025-26, simply are not on file.
The front of the table has the same problem in reverse: the first four seasons, 1973-74 through 1976-77, carry coaches and no records, which is why 49 listed seasons produce only 45 counted years.
The Knoxville pattern
Across the three sports we cover at this school, the shape is identical and worth stating plainly.
- Girls basketball: 688 wins, eleven regionals, no sectional
- Volleyball: 649 wins, eleven regionals, no sectional — none since 2002-03
- Boys basketball: 1,426 wins, seven regionals, no sectional
Twenty-nine regional championships between them. No sectional in any of the three, ever. Knoxville is a school that wins its own bracket and then meets someone bigger.
How it compares to Knoxville volleyball
The two girls programmes are near-mirrors. Both sit around 650-690 all-time wins, both have exactly eleven regional titles, and neither has a sectional. The main difference is timing: volleyball’s regionals ran from 1986 to 2003 and stopped, while basketball’s ran from 1997 to 2020.
Both records are also stale — volleyball’s stops at 2020-21, basketball’s at 2021-22. Knoxville appears to have stopped filing results with the IHSA around the same time across sports.
2026-27 schedule
Around fourteen games are posted for 2026-27. IHSA girls practice is scheduled to open Monday, November 2.
We will publish the full schedule on this page as soon as it is posted, and update results through the season.
Finding Knoxville online
Searching for this team is genuinely difficult. “Knoxville” returns the University of Tennessee and the city in Tennessee before anything in Illinois, and there is a Knoxville in Iowa as well. Knoxville, Illinois is a town of about 3,000 in Knox County, five miles east of Galesburg, and “Blue Bullets” is the search term that actually works.
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 through 2025-26 — four missing years
- Confirmation that Dean Axcell is still in charge; the IHSA’s last entry for him is 2021-22
- Records for the four blank seasons at the start of the table, 1973-77
- The 2026-27 roster
The school
Knoxville Community Unit School District 202 serves a town of roughly 3,000 in Knox County, five miles east of Galesburg. It was the original county seat before Galesburg took the title, and the old courthouse square is still the centre of town.
The school competes in Class 1A and 2A depending on the sport, and the athletics department uses the domain bluebullets.org — which is the most reliable place to find schedules and staff when MaxPreps is behind.
Where Knoxville Blue Bullets rank in the area
Across the fourteen girls basketball programmes we cover, Knoxville Blue Bullets sit fifth by all-time wins (688), sixth by winning percentage (.579) and fourth by regional championships (eleven).
The nearest programmes by wins are Princeville Princes above (707) and Stark County Rebels below (559).
The sectional round is the wall. Knoxville Blue Bullets have won eleven regional titles and lost the sectional every time — eleven exits at the same stage, and no sectional championship in the programme’s history.
No state finals trophy. Five 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 girls basketball guide.
By the numbers
| Games on record | 1,188 |
| Recorded seasons | 45 |
| Average wins per season | 15.3 |
| Average games per season | 26 |
| Regional titles | 11 |
| Share of all area regionals | 9.8% |
| Years since last regional | 6 |
6 years since the last regional puts Knoxville in the middle of the area — recent enough to be remembered, long enough to matter.
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 688-500 across 45 recorded years. Coaching and schedule detail from MaxPreps team pages, retrieved September 2026. Corrections posted the same day.
