Bixler, hard-working players, have brought Bell City basketball back

Third-year Bell City High School varsity boy's basketball coach Luke Bixler celebrates his team winning the Oran Invitational Tournament on Friday over top-seed Richland (Essex) at Oran High School.

Tom Davis ~ Tdavis@semoball.com

Bell City junior guard Jake Asher was in the second grade when the Cubs last had a winning basketball season. It looks as if he won’t have to wait that long to see – or be a contributor to – the next one.

“We’re not just some easy team to go through,” Asher said after helping his team beat top-seed Richland (Essex) on Friday in the championship game of the Oran Invitational Tournament at Oran High School. “We work hard, and we earn our stuff.”

The Cubs are unbeaten through three games and that win over the Rebels gave evidence to hoop fans throughout Southeast Missouri that marking down a “W” before playing the Cubs is no longer a safe choice to make.

“I know the work that they have put in,” third-year Bell City coach Luke Bixler said following the 58-47 win over the Rebels. “I know how bad that they wanted to prove everybody wrong.”

Nobody gave Bell City much of a chance to win the 69th annual OIT, because after all, the Cubs hadn’t given people much reason to in this tournament of late.

The Cubs had lost eight consecutive games in the OIT over the past four seasons by an average margin of 32 points per defeat.

“This group of guys,” Bixler said, “is the most competitive group that I’ve had. I see it every day. The extra reps and the willingness to do the extra stuff.”

You wouldn’t believe Friday’s performance was possible if you had been in the Bell City gym in the fall of 2022 when the baby-faced Bixler began teaching the details of successful basketball to a group of kids who lacked size, strength, and skill, but not desire.

The program had won just five games total over the previous five seasons, and Bixler was conducting the first practices, as a head coach, in his life.

“I believed since my freshman year (in 2022-23),” Asher said.

That made one person.

“I knew that it was a process,” Asher continued. “The process wasn’t looking good during the first two years. But I knew coming in this year, we had lost a couple of seniors, but I know the work that our guys have put in over the summer. We work in practice, all of the drills, we put in 100 percent.”

And the kids believed in Bixler, as well.

“(Coach Bixler) is really good at getting everybody into it,” junior center Kale Richardson said. “He gets everybody going. If you are down, he is going to get you up somehow.”

That is precisely what Bixler has done with the Cub program.

Bixler has rejuvenated the program, and he has done it with defense.

The year prior to his arrival, Bell City won twice in 22 games and allowed its opposition to average nearly 80 points per game, which is a lot in 32 minutes. In nine games that season, teams scored at least 88 points, including Charleston issuing a 107-29 drubbing.

Bixler’s first team lowered that average by eight points per game. The next year it was lowered another eight points, and thus far, the Cubs are allowing just over 54 points per game to opponents.

As the defense improved (and offensive skill, as well), the wins began to happen. Occasionally.

Bell City won five games in Bixler’s first season and eight last year, with four defeats coming by either one point or in overtime.

“When we started this,” Richardson said, “we knew that it was going to be a grind. Nobody believed in us.”

They do now.