For E-town, Sweet 16 season lacked a key presence. ‘I wish that I could call him.’
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Sweet Sixteen stories
The 2020 Boys’ Sweet 16 was postponed before it began because of the coronavirus pandemic. The stoppage of our annual high school basketball state tournament denied 16 schools and their communities — for many — a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for recognition on one of Kentucky’s most prominent stages. In the absence of basketball, the Herald-Leader is telling their stories. Click below to read the stories published so far.
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Editor’s Note: The 2020 Boys’ Sweet 16 was postponed before it began because of the coronavirus pandemic. The stoppage of our annual high school basketball state tournament denied 16 schools and their communities — for many — a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for recognition on one of Kentucky’s most prominent stages. In the absence of basketball, the Herald-Leader is telling their stories.
James Haire, the head coach of the Elizabethtown High School boys’ basketball team, has been at this for a long time.
He led E-town to a state title in 2000 and took the Panthers back to Rupp Arena five years later. Before he became the school’s head coach, Haire played for the E-town team that advanced to the Sweet 16 in 1975 and was later an assistant coach with the program.
This season — Haire’s 25th year in charge of the Panthers — was different.
Last June, former Elizabethtown coach Ray Vencill Jr. passed away at the age of 83. Vencill, a three-time Kentucky high school coach of the year, led the Panthers to the state title game in 1972 and coached Richmond Madison High School to the state title game two years before that. He was Haire’s former coach, longtime friend, and professional mentor. This season, for the first time in Haire’s career, he wasn’t there.
“He’s been a very strong influence in my life, especially professionally,” Haire said. “I would probably call him two or three times a week, especially after ball games. And we would just talk about things. I tell every young coach, ‘If you want to be truly successful, you need to find an older coach to talk to.’ Not that he’s going to tell you exactly what to do, but he can just share some things that he went through. We all have parent issues. We all have player issues. We all have the same things. But just talking to him made me realize, ‘I’m not in this by myself. This thing that’s happening right now with me, it’s not new.’
“And he could see things in my team.”
In the past, Vencill would observe Haire’s teams — first from the stands, then, when health problems kept him from coming to the gym, from game film that Haire sent — and provide feedback on what he saw. Haire said his own best evaluations come in the summer, when he lets his assistants do the coaching and he sits back and watches. During past seasons, Vencill was there to play that role.
“My conversations with him, I missed them this year,” Haire said. “It was different. I would tell my wife many times, ‘I wish that I could call him right now.’ Because there were some issues. Every year, there were some issues.”
Even in a dream season such as this one, there were issues.
Elizabethtown ended up winning the 5th Region to earn a spot in Rupp Arena, and the Panthers would have played undefeated Ashland Blazer in the first session of the Sweet 16 had the tournament not been postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Less than two weeks before E-town stamped a ticket to Rupp, the team lost by 21 points to John Hardin in the 17th District title game.
“They’re a very resilient group, and I think the John Hardin game was a wake-up call,” Haire said. “When you go into the region as a runner-up, you’re playing other districts’ best teams.
“I think the team re-focused a little bit, understood what they had to do, understood the things they didn’t do in that district championship game. And things just fell into place for us.”
‘They were tiny’
Haire knew before the season that he had a pretty good group of basketball players. E-town had impressed during the summer, and a team filled with returning players from the previous season had some high expectations coming into this one.
On paper, however, the Panthers’ roster didn’t necessarily look like a region champ.
“I didn’t really realize how small we were until I was looking at our lineup,” Haire said, noting that he starts a pair of 5-foot-7 twins and then naming off the rest of his starters from there, a group that featured no one taller than 6-1. “I was thinking, ‘Man, we’re kind of small.’”
The E-town coach said he’d been following this particular group of players since they were little kids. He remembers them coming to summer camps when they were in the kindergarten and first grade. Many of them have been playing on the same teams since the second grade. To Haire’s recollection, they only lost one game in their final two years of middle school.
But …
“They were tiny,” Haire said with a laugh. “They’re small now, but I can show you pictures of them a few years ago when they were in the eighth grade, and they were tiny.”
The guard-heavy group doesn’t play small, their coach said, and they won their first four games of the season by an average margin of 44.0 points. Then, adversity hit.
One of E-town’s starting twins — Kam Sherrard — broke his ankle and missed 17 games. And the team’s tallest player — 6-4 sophomore Clay Games — separated his shoulder and was out for the season. Haire said both were major losses, but the victories kept piling up.
Junior guard Jaquias Franklin led E-town with 21.5 points per game and is the kind of player that could have had a breakout week on the state tournament stage.
“He sees the floor extremely well. He’s one of the very few players I’ve had where the game is in slow motion to him,” Haire said. “He’s very deceptive, as far as his movement. He doesn’t seem very fast, unless you guard him. … He plays all phases of the game very well.”
But it was a team effort, led by that 2021 class. Fellow juniors Camden Williams, Kam and Khia Sherrard, and Alandre Murphy all averaged at least nine points per game, and 6-1 senior Myles Fields — the closest thing E-town had to a “post player” — averaged 9.3 points and 5.6 rebounds.
These Panthers didn’t have much size, but they got after it on the court.
“I’d tell everybody, ‘If they didn’t count fouls, we’d probably win every game,’” Haire said with a laugh. “Their man-to-man defense on the ball was sometimes as intense as any team I’ve ever seen, ever coached. … They’re just a fun group to watch.”
Haire knows his old coach, Vencill, would have enjoyed seeing this bunch on the court.
“He would love their defensive intensity,” he said.
Haire doesn’t think his current players knew much about Vencill’s impact on E-town basketball other than what he had told them. But the late coach sure knew about them.
“I told the players that I was going to dedicate this season to him,” Haire said. “And it was just unfortunate that we haven’t been able to finish the season out. But they did win the 5th Region. And that’s something no one can take from them.”
This story was originally published April 6, 2020 at 12:16 PM.
