'They never quit': Alliance High School basketball fought through challenges in 2023-24

Coaches always stress they want their teams playing their best basketball at tournament time.

That’s exactly what the Alliance High School boys basketball team accomplished this season.

“We came together late during the season and we started to make a good little push, I thought,” said first-year Alliance head coach Chet Harper, a former assistant at Canton Timken and Canton McKinley and one of the greatest players in AHS basketball history.

The Aviators, who were minus starters due to injuries during the regular season, finished with a deceiving 9-15 record, but played outstanding basketball in the postseason.

“Some of the challenges we overcame this year (were being without two starters),” Harper explained. “Jayce Crockett, who was playing really well, tore his ACL in Game 9. He’s a starter and he was out the rest of the year, and then Kai’vion Thomas tore his labrum right before the season tipped off and Marquavian McLendon was another guy that did not play because of his knee injury, so we got stung pretty good right there at the beginning of the season. So now, I’ve got a team (minus) what I thought would have multiple starters and lots of points back. Jaden Proctor came over from Marlington which helped out a ton, but he also got hurt midway through the season and missed two or three games as well, so we battled the injury bug this year. People didn’t know that we had all that going on.”

Harper praised all six of his graduating seniors, including standout K’Vaughn Davis, Sam Gress, Jaden Proctor, Ramhir Hawkins, Kah’viaughn Hawkins and Crockett.

“It was challenging (minus many injured players) but you know I couldn’t ask for a better group of kids with how hard they worked,” lauded Harper. “They never quit, even when we got out of the race for winning the league, these kids kept fighting and believing. I told them at the beginning of the season that we were good enough that we could challenge for a district title and we were right there.”

One of the highlights to the season occurred when the 33rd-seeded Aviators traveled to Parma to play 22nd-seeded Holy Name in tournament action. Holy Name was 15-9 and finished a perfect 12-0 in winning the outright Great Lakes Conference championship this winter. Not only did the Aviators turn back the Green Wave, they did it in impressive fashion, ousting them on their home court 61-51 while capturing a Division II sectional championship in the process.

“I knew if we could play well enough to get by Holy Name, which was a really good team, that we had a legitimate shot (in the district) and we just fell a little short in triple overtime (90-84) there (to VASJ in a district semifinal) which won the district,” said Harper, whose Aviators played another outstanding game against a Viking team (18-7), which was 17th-seeded in the tournament.

“We were right there where we needed to be and in line in winning the district,” stated the AHS mentor. “We actually had two chances to win, several, actually. We were up two and the (VASJ) guy stepped clearly out of bounds and they missed that one, too, and they scored and we went to overtime. In regulation, what is crazy, we had an out-of-bounds play that we ran and when we threw the ball to K’Vaughn Davis with five seconds to go, he actually made the shot, but he got drilled — completely ran over — and they let that one go. It should have been an and-one. But we had opportunities, we just didn’t make enough free throws as well. But we were right there.”

Harper said after checking the video, he contends Alliance should have won the game.

“The score was incorrect, we really won the game (in regulation) 64-63,” said the Alliance head coach. “They gave them a point in the first quarter. There was a discrepancy we had on free throw and they gave them (VASJ) credit for a free throw they did not make. They shot a technical and they only made one out of two and they credited them two, so during the game, I was going back and forth, so when we finally got the film, the correct score was 64-63 us at the end of regulation.”

On top of playing well in the postseason, Harper said a regular-season highlight was defeating one of Alliance’s longtime big-school rivals.

“I think one of the bigger highlights was we did upset Massillon (69-66) when they were playing really well during the middle of the season,” praised the Aviators’ head coach. “That was probably our biggest highlight.”

Despite battling injury issues, the Aviators still finished third in the Eastern Buckeye Conference with a 6-4 league mark. West Branch won the EBC crown with a 9-1 league ledger but Alliance played the Warriors tough in both meetings, losing by five points twice.

“In both of those (West Branch) games we led in the fourth quarter late and we just squandered it away a little bit,” said the AHS mentor. “We had a lot of inexperience out there. We only really had K’Vaughn (Davis), JR (Jackson), who is a sophomore, and Ramhir (Hawkins) with lots of experience. The EBC was very competitive, more than I ever thought. There’s no easy games. Night in and night out, it’s a tough out.”

Because Alliance had to juggle its lineup this season, many younger players got some early varsity playing time.

“We (lose) six seniors out of our lineup,” said Harper. “But Cole Pasco ended up playing lots of minutes and he’s a sophomore, and we do get Kai’vion Thomas, the center, coming back, and we have three or four freshmen that got to play a lot of JV and some varsity minutes, and I think the three or four freshmen could be really good.”

Those freshmen include Cashe Brisker, Sam Hays, Charlie Ekey and Brody Fast.

“Those are the four freshmen that all started JV and toward the end were playing a little varsity,” noted Harper. “Our JV’s did win the EBC league, so we do have some sophomores, and you add them in with JR (Jackson) and Cole (Pasco), the guys who played a lot of varsity this year, and it may not be early next year, but hopefully by the end we should be playing pretty good.”

The Aviators will be led by one of the most exciting players around in JR Jackson.

“He (Jackson) really came on in that last game we played, I think he had close to 40 points,” said Harper of the multi-talented Alliance guard. “I think he had 37 points and 37 points against St. Joe’s is really good. Even against all of the Federal League teams I think he scored at least 20 points on all of those teams. I think his future is bright, I think he’s going to be one of the better players in Stark County by his senior year and I think in Northeast Ohio. As a sophomore he ended up averaging 17 points per game this year.”

Harper is proud of the rugged schedule Alliance plays.

“We played the sixth-toughest schedule in Division II this year in the state of Ohio,” said the AHS mentor whose teams played many larger schools such as McKinley, Warren Harding, Perry, Massillon, GlenOak and Hoover. “So along with all of those injuries and the kids trying to learn a new system, it almost came to fruition (in the postseason). So we were right in line I thought to be where we needed to be late in the season.”

Alliance will once again play a strong schedule in the 2024-25 campaign.

“Our schedule is top notch,” said Harper. “We still have McKinley, GlenOak and Louisville and I believe we picked up Howland, which was good this year.”

Alliance will drop from Division II to Division III next year when the OHSAA expands from four to seven divisions in basketball.

Harper can’t wait to see what the 2024-25 campaign brings.

“Next year, I’m really excited about getting in the gym with these kids,” said the AHS head coach. “I think we’ll have one senior (Henry Scheible) and everybody else on the team will be juniors and sophomores. I’m going to put these guys through the gauntlet this spring, summer and fall. It’s a process, but now they know what I expect and we know what we’ve got to do. We’ll be in kind of a mini-rebuild next year, but by the end of the year, or midyear, we’ll be pretty doggone good and a tough out for anybody.”

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Chet Harper talks about first season as Alliance basketball coach