Hugoton Eagles soaring under O'Neil
Head coach Trey O’Neil managed to take his 23-2 Hugoton squad on a 21-game winning streak after losing games against Olathe West and Hays in the Hays City Shootout to open last season, ultimately capturing the program’s first state title in school history with a 67-58 win over perennial powerhouse McPherson in the 4A championship game.
With that championship win, O’Neil, in only his second year as a head coach, managed to carry on what his dad, Glenn O’Neil, made a habit of in the decades prior while coaching at Scott City and building a consistent winner into a consistent state championship contender.
“I grew up in a household with two parents in the teaching profession and our dad as the head football and basketball coach,” Trey said. “Our schedules were directly related to the school calendar, especially the sports schedules. While in elementary I rarely went home right after school, I went to practice with my brother and all the other coaches’ kids.”
Scott City won five of the school’s six basketball state titles under the elder O’Neil. Prior to his arrival in 1996, the last trip to the state tournament was 1979 and the last title in 1958. O’Neil took them to the state tourney in his first season, and then three more times after that, before they managed their first state title in 2006.
On that first championship team, Trey and his older brother Brett were ball boys. Then, in 2011, while Trey was an eighth grader and Brett was a sophomore, Scott City began a streak of dominance.
In the first year of the run, the Beavers were led by future Wichita State Shocker and New York Knick, Ron Baker.
Baker’s senior season was capped with a buzzer-beater victory over Minneapolis in the title game and seemed to be all the Scott City community talked about when basketball was the topic. But even after Baker went on to become a key player on a couple of the best Shocker teams in program history, the Beavers lost no momentum.
“He was the face of the title team that started our streak of four state basketball championships in five years,” Trey said. “On that team was a core of young players that put in their time throughout their early years as well, so when Ron graduated it wasn’t a place of panic with us. We had a saying of ‘Tradition Never Graduates’ and Scott City's success just kept on rolling onto the next state championship.”
The Beavers won again in 2012 and 2013, with Trey playing a key role in the rotation as a freshman, and then starting as a sophomore, while his brother started at point guard during all three titles in that span. As a senior in 2015, Trey again helped his father bring home a state title, making it four titles in five seasons for Scott City basketball.
Not only was O’Neil’s time playing for his father a fun and successful experience, it was also invaluable to his eventual approach as a professional.
“It is a great luxury of having one of the state’s best coaches as your father,” Trey said. “He has helped guide me in the right direction when going into the coaching profession. I try to model what I have learned from him when I played for him to now when talking back and forth about my current team.”
This fall, Glenn O’Neil wrapped up his third season coaching Dodge City football, a sport he also has a strong track record in, coaching his sons to a 2012 3A state title and then again to a 2014 state runner-up finish while coaching both sports at Scott City, an incredibly rare head coaching combo for any coach, especially one at a school from the 2A classification and above.
O’Neil’s praise for the programs his father ran centers around embracing competition and having constant expectation to win, the latter being an approach the community embraced as well.
“The ability to have confidence in yourself, your team, and your coaches beat teams before you even stepped off the bus,” Trey said. “The expectations placed upon those state championship teams were sometimes unfair. As a high school kid having people come up to you at the local Pizza Hut saying they already have their hotel room booked for the state tournament is eye opening. We knew that our community was planning on being there so we had to do everything we could to get there to play for them.”
After O’Neil wrapped up his high school career with three basketball titles and one football title in tow, he was offered a full-ride scholarship to Fort Hays State, where he played all four years for the Tigers.
After graduation in 2019, he accepted an assistant coaching job at Hays High, where he coached under another young and already accomplished head coach, Alex Hutchins. The Indians won back-to-back WAC titles and sub-state championships in O’Neil’s time there.
After his second year as an assistant, O’Neil was offered the job at Hugoton, which he accepted.
Hugoton basketball was on the uptick prior to O’Neil’s arrival, with a state runner-up finish in 2016 and state tourney appearances in 2017 and 2021, but O’Neil and his coaching staff brought a new level of intensity and saw major success right off the bat.
“What I’ve implemented with our guys is the work-ethic of how hard a championship team must work at, which all starts in the weight room,” Trey said. “We do a lot of similar things that the Scott City program did when I was growing up. I have also been very fortunate to have really good basketball players in our program, but I do think that we have done a great job with our skill development to enhance those skills to translate to the court.”
The Eagles finished 19-5 with a 6-0 league record and state tournament appearance in O’Neil’s first season on the job, before last season’s state title.
Much like Scott City was forced to do in 2012 after Ron Baker’s graduation, O’Neil entered this season with the challenge of replacing Sports in Kansas Co-4A Players of the Year.
“Carson Bennett and Ryle Riddlesperger were two of the best basketball players that I have
had the honor to coach in my short coaching career,” Trey said. “Their place in our program will always be on display. However, as a new season (is) upon us we have a group of guys that have played a lot of basketball together throughout the years.”
Given that O’Neil’s first season with the team came on the heels of losing 90% of the varsity scoring from the year prior, this challenge is nothing the coach and his team haven’t overcome before.
The group back is loaded with seniors, including returning starters Dasean Lewis (5-10, 9 ppg, 3 rpg, 2.8 apg, All-State second team), Emmett Gaskill (6-3, 8 ppg, 3.2 apg, All-State honorable mention), and Isaac Martin (7.3 ppg, 5.5 rpg, All-State honorable mention).
O’Neil also noted seniors Griffin Heger (5-10, 4.5 ppg, 1.5 rpg, 1.5 spg) and Izeyah Harris (6-3, 3.5 ppg, 3.5 rpg, 1 bpg) as likely starters, with classmate Alexis Jimenez being a key player off the bench for the Eagles.
“We bring back six seniors that have played big time varsity minutes for us,” Trey said just prior to the season. “Before the season even started, I had conversations with each of them about how it's going to take all of us to help speed the clocks up for our guys that weren’t on the court with us last year. They’ve done a great job of that so far this season and our young guys are forming into what we need them to be to complement this senior class.”
Juniors Jay Acosta (6-2), Julian Delgado (6-2), and Grant Niehues (6-4) are others seeing varsity minutes this season.
“We have a group of guys that have won at a high rate,” Trey said. “Our pace of play will be higher this year in hopes to make it a full court game. We will place a big emphasis on the defensive side of the ball for we could be special in that part of the game with the pieces we have. Guys will be in different roles, but at the same time they are ready for that.”
Despite the intensity and focus on winning and the positive results they have yielded, O’Neil hasn’t lost sight of what made him fall in love with the sport years ago.
“We place a big emphasis on having fun throughout it all. High school basketball is supposed to be fun. One of my main goals in guiding a high school basketball program is to strive to give our players the best high school basketball experience we can. Some teams have higher ceilings than others when it comes to wins and loses, but if we can strive to give them the best experience then it will be a successful year.”
The Eagles have been strong out of the gates this winter, holding a 4-1 record with their lone loss coming against Life Prep Academy of Wichita in the championship of the Hays City Shootout.
Given the start and the fact that this group of upperclassmen has gone 46-8 with two state tournament appearances and a state title under their third year head coach, the sky could once again be the limit for the Eagles.
“Our guys are used to winning on the basketball court. When you have a group that is made up of proven winners, they are hard to beat. I’m really excited to coach this group to see where we can end up.”