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Aaron Sovern is perhaps feeling a bit nostalgic this week as he prepares his Yorkville Christian team for a trip to Champaign.
History is not lost on a coach trying to make history.
The state basketball finals are back after two years without them because of the pandemic, and back home. The tournament has left Peoria and returned to Champaign, which hosted the event from 1919 to 1995. Yorkville Christian, which opened its doors in 2014, is chasing its first state basketball title in its state debut.
Sovern, coincidentally, was a junior on the 1995 Aurora Christian team that lost to Normal U-High in the Class A final in the last tournament in Champaign.
His Mustangs will be playing Steeleville in the first Class 1A semifinal at 10 a.m. Thursday at State Farm Center. In the new format, the Class 1A and Class 2A semifinals will be played Thursday and Class 3A and Class 4A semifinals Friday, with all four title games Saturday.
“This is huge,” Sovern said. “[Assistant] coach [Eric] Long and I were talking about that as a little kid growing up in Illinois, your dream was to go downstate as a player,” Sovern said. “I can remember going as a fan when [Aurora Christian] went there in sixth grade, and I got to go down and play as a junior. It’s a great opportunity for our guys.”
Yorkville Christian (23-13) enters the weekend as maybe the biggest favorite in any class. The Mustangs, led by Duke recruit Jaden Schutt, have beaten six playoff opponents by an average margin of 43.8 points.
Yorkville Christian entered the season as the No. 1-ranked team in Class 1A, with a high-profile commit, and embraced the attention that came with it. In fact, the Mustangs wear pregame shooting shirts with a literal target on the back.
“We have always known that we have a target on our back as a private school, definitely knew that as a 1A school all eyes would be on us. Instead of being the hunter, the little engine that could, we would be the hunted,” Sovern said. “I wanted them to be aware. You have a target on your back. You’re going into buildings against much bigger schools, people are looking for reasons you shouldn’t be there and shouldn’t have your rankings and we wanted them to be mindful of that. We embrace that.”
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The Mustangs indeed took some arrows playing an almost unheard of regular-season schedule for a school its size against larger-school powerhouses. Their 13 losses would be the most-ever by a state champion, and only the third with double-digit losses.
Along the way, though, they notched marquee wins over Orr, Kenwood and St. Ignatius, the latter part of a nine-game winning streak Yorkville Christian takes into the weekend.
Against fellow 1A schools, they haven’t been challenged yet.
“There were times this year we weren’t sure, maybe we overscheduled, were our kids getting beaten down,” Sovern said, “but I’ll credit to our leadership, Jaden and Elijah [Fisher]. Credit to our senior leadership for keeping a steady ship when things got hard.”
Schutt, voted unanimous First Team All-State by the Associated Press Wednesday, is averaging 25.3 points with 109 3-pointers on the season. Second Team All-Stater KJ Vasser is averaging 16.4 with 115 3-pointers. A third senior, Tyler Burrows, is averaging 11.1 points and 4.2 assists and junior David Douglas Jr. 10.2 points.
Steeleville (29-6), like Yorkville Christian, is making its first state tournament appearance. In fact, the school of 151 students 60 miles southeast of St. Louis had never won a sectional before this year, and had won just three regionals. The school did take third at the Class 1A baseball tournament in 2019.
Steeleville’s leading scorer, 6-foot junior guard Jacoby Gross, only averages 11.3 points per game and 6-5 junior Reid Harriss, its tallest player, checks in at 10.6 points and 8.4 rebounds. But the Warriors’ calling card is defense and rebounding. They’ve won 11 in a row and have given up just 36.8 points per game during the postseason.
Steeleville was ranked seventh in the final Associated Press Class 1A poll. Yorkville Christian was No. 1.
“They play hard. They play quick on the halfcourt, but they’re very deliberate,” Sovern said. “You’ll watch them play, there is so much action happening, and there’s just 18 points at halftime. They’re deliberate with what they do, they got strength defensively, not as much proficient offensively as other teams are. Defense and rebounding keeps them in games.”
The second Class 1A semifinal will pit second-ranked Scales Mound (35-2) against fourth-ranked Liberty (29-5). The Class 1A third-place game will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday night with the championship game at 11 a.m. Saturday.