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Advance boys basketball look to etch their name in program history with a state title
ADVANCE, Mo. -- Shortly after practice on Monday, Advance boys basketball coach Bubba Wheetley points up at the wall along the north side of the gymnasium at Advance High School. He's not pointing at the banners that line the view in orange and black, like everything else in the gym, but at a more temporary installation.
"See those two pictures up there?" Wheetley says.
A pair of poster-sized team photos are draped above the corners of the court. Just a week earlier they were not there, but now they serve as a reminder of what the Hornets have been working toward, not just this season but ever since Wheetley took over the program ahead of the 2013-14 season.
The photos capture the 1972 and 1975 Hornets squads that accomplished something no other Advance basketball team has -- they won a state title.
"From Day 1, I'm preaching, 'I want us to get back and have that tradition again,'" Wheetley says.
Now, in the days before Advance travels to Columbia, Missouri, to play in its second MSHSAA Class 1 Show-Me Showdown final four in three years -- where a semifinal with North Andrew awaits at noon Thursday -- the history looms large.
Advance senior Preston Wuebker reaches for the ball during the championship game of the Southeast Missourian Christmas Tournament against Charleston on Dec. 30, 2016 at the Show Me Center in Cape Girardeau.
Wheetley knows a little something about that tradition. Despite having no coaching resume to speak of when he began helping as an assistant a few years before becoming head coach, Wheetley has personal stake in Advance's success -- he played there in '70s.
From the sound of it, he might still be able to step on the floor and play, but short of that, it's still overwhelmingly clear his passion has not died.
"He is the hardest-working 57-year-old man I have seen in my life," Advance senior Preston Wuebker says. "He comes to the gym literally by himself. Like, he'll come to the gym and just run sprints, just for an hour and half probably, and just keeps running. He runs them hard, too. He carries a little towel in his hand and just wipes his face off every time. He just books it."
Wheetley's commitment has earned the respect of his players, who have grown to see him as a father figure.
That, as much as anything, is where the 2016-2017 Hornets are finding their success -- a blossoming sense of family.
Advance made it to state in 2015 with a young group and, the veterans recognize now, a sense that big things were ahead of them both in the short and long term.
Instead, the Hornets fell to Meadville in the semifinal and settled for third place.
More telling, though, was what happened next.
The squad returned for 2015-16 with big ideas -- this was a state-caliber team destined for the final four. Until 16 minutes of subpar basketball derailed those dreams.
The Hornets arrived at Bloomfield High School for a sectional game against Gideon, but did little more than show up. The team played, perhaps, its worst half of the year -- maybe in two years -- and by halftime, trailing by 22, its state dreams were all but over.
"I don't think the kids overlooked them, I think they just thought that they'd find a way to win, and it just doesn't work that way," Wheetley says. "I thought we let one get away from us last year, I really do. But everything that [could go] wrong, went wrong in that game. [Gideon] played a good game, we got in foul trouble and they just flat out beat us. They went out and took it to us, and that happens sometimes."
The result was a shock to the program's system, and it has informed everything anyone in orange and black has done since. Even to this day, it seems to haunt the Hornets.
"That just never goes away," Wheetley says. "It feels better now. It feels better because we got back (to state) again, but that's been burning at me since it happened."
It has become increasingly clear, though, that the result may have been the most important thing for a team that had all the makings of a dynasty when it first walked onto the court at state three years ago.
"You don't want to have that feeling (from last year) again," senior Dawson Mayo says. "You want to go out on top at the end of the season. That's what we're trying to do."
The Hornets graduated two starters, Austin Ladd and Brian Whitson, following the defeat to Gideon, and there were questions about how the team would replace the pair. Their departures only magnified the sense of a missed opportunity.
"After the game it was just hard watching everybody, just the emotions that were in that locker room," senior Brendan Crader says. "Knowing that they're done and seeing, 'Oh man, it really can end. You don't just get it handed to you.'"
The wakeup call resonated throughout the Hornets locker room. If the players took things for granted before, they no longer did. And they understood that something had to change.
"We wanted to change a lot of things, actually," Wuebker says. "Last year, we weren't together as a team as much. After practice we'd go our separate ways. ... It was like you'd see each other at practice and then you'd leave, and you don't see each other again until the next day at practice."
The senior trio of Wuebker, Mayo and Crader worked to set a different tone in 2017, embracing a new kind of closeness under the watchful eye of father-figure Wheetley.
No longer are the Hornets just a team. They have embraced one another as family.
"This team is way different than it was last year," says junior Armani Vermillion, the team's leading scorer at 19.4 points per game. "We do basically everything together. If we don't, we all talk and let each other know where we're going. We make sure everyone's OK and everyone's staying out of trouble and is safe. If anybody needs anything, just give us a text and we'll try to help out as best as we can."
Vermillion seems anxious to make that tight bond understood, and that in itself is indicative of how the team has grown in the last year. While the three seniors have been together since kindergarten, Vermillion has only lived in Advance for three years, moving from Delaware before his freshman season. Now, though, he feels as much a part of the group as anyone, as Wuebker ribs his teammate about his shooting style when he arrived in Southeast Missouri -- basically described as Shawn Marion with ankle weights.
"I tried last year. I really did," Wheetley says. "We did a lot of things together, but they just never came together. I don't know. You've got to want to do that. They liked each other, don't get me wrong, it just wasn't that family. This group here, I think they saw that last year. I think they figured it out. You have to be (a family)."
Now, the team has embraced dinners at Wheetley's house and spending free time together. The three seniors and Vermillion sit and throw verbal jabs and share memories more like brothers sitting around the living room than teammates in the gym.
"It changes everything," Wuebker says. "It brings us closer as a team. It's just easier to play with each other on the court. ... It's just chemistry, it's all there. That's what it is this year."
Now, the group is trying to cement its legacy at Advance High School -- the kind associated with the 1972 and 1975 squads.
Last year, Advance won its first Oran Invitational Tournament since 1963. This year it claimed a Stoddard County Conference Tournament title for the first time since 1978 and won its fourth consecutive district title. Now it's trying to end another decades-long drought when it travels to state this week.
The first challenge standing in the Hornets' way will be North Andrew (28-1). Hailing from the northwest corner of the state, the Cardinals only loss of the season came to Stanberry, and they later avenged that loss in the district title game.
North Andrew's berth ends a streak of four consecutive sectional losses.
As of the start of the week, Wheetley's only knowledge of the Cardinals is gleaned from a grainy feed of their quarterfinal win over Worth County 54-41.
"It looks like, to me, they play a lot of man (defense)," Wheetley says. "I did see them play some 1-2-2 press, but they back into a man after that. They look like they've got the size, looks like they've got a couple good guards, so I'm sure we've got our hands full.
"They're all good. That's why they're there -- they're good. We'll have our hands full with anyone."
But for Advance, it may be less about the opponent and more about playing for each other and the uniform -- the same one Wheetley pulled on more than four decades ago; the same one that lifted those banners in the gym 40 years ago -- the same banners which, while learning the game in junior high under Mayo's father, Charlie, the current crop of seniors would look at and ask, "What does it mean?"
Now, they know what it means, and they know what it means to come so close and end up nearly as far away as they started.
"We're not happy with what we've done so far," Wuebker says. "I mean, we're happy about it, but we're not done. We want a ring. ... That's what our goal is.
"It would be icing on the cake if we won. I just want a ring on my finger, that's what I want."
Now they know the meaning of family.
"I feel like with us being so close together, we all have the same exact mindset," Crader says. "We all want to win this thing. It's really shown lately. We are all completely focused in practice. Like we said in the group chat -- we were all texting, 'We want to win this. We have to give 110 percent. We want to win this. We want to bring a state championship back to Advance.'"
And as Wheetley stands and looks up at the past glories of Advance basketball, that's exactly what he wants to hear.
"I like that. I like what they said to you," Wheetley says. "They're looking to win this thing, not just to go up there and be satisfied. ... They want to win, and everyone does, but I think they're more ready this time. Maybe they're more ready this time. I hope."