Connally's surging boys basketball team is shining in the school's new era of athletics
As the Pflugerville school district campus enters a new era of high school athletics, Connally seems to be having a moment.
On Friday, Connally's boys basketball team tightened its grip on first place in the District 23-5A race with a 62-53 win over second-place East View at the North Austin school that's almost hidden behind the SUVs and service warehouse of a CarMax dealership at the northern tip of Lamar Boulevard. The Cougars (19-8, 7-0) will enter the second half of district play as the No. 2 team in the American-Statesman’s Class 5A area poll.
Meanwhile, next door at Cougar Stadium, Connally's boys soccer team — the Statesman's No. 3 area team — completed its nondistrict schedule with a 6-2-1 record after a hard-fought 0-0 draw with LASA.
The wins are a welcome sight for new football coach and boys athletic coordinator Charles Burton, the former head football coach at Del Valle who spent the past two seasons as an assistant at Lake Travis. Burton arrived on campus just last week and said he expects such achievements to become the norm again at Connally regardless of the sport.
“They’ve had a lot of success here,” Burton said, standing under banners honoring the school's past athletic glories while watching the basketball teams warm up in Connally’s gym. “We plan on bringing that back.”
First-year basketball coach John Howie embraces that optimism. Like Burton, Howie’s roots stretch back to hard-scrabble schools on the southwestern edge of Houston. He coached for programs in the Fort Bend and Houston school districts before eventually moving to Central Texas.
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Connally’s talent as well as the program’s potential enticed Howie from Elgin, where he had spent the past two seasons as head coach.
“It’s not just about basketball; it’s way past basketball,” Howie said. “It’s about the players’ academics, how they treat each other, how they behave in the classroom. All those things are so important, so I’m real excited with Coach Burton coming in.”
Dwindling numbers, demographic shifts
Connally’s boys basketball team has missed the playoffs just once in the past decade, and the soccer program under Ryan Ford is a perennial postseason participant. Overall, however, the school’s athletic program has struggled with dwindling numbers and demographic shifts over the past decade.
Connally, which opened as the Pflugerville school district’s second high school in 1996, quickly established itself as an athletic power in its first decade. Both the boys and girls basketball teams qualified for the state tournament in that span, and the football team made back-to-back appearances in a state semifinal in the mid-2000s. Volleyball, baseball and boys soccer all competed in regional tournaments.
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But as the school district expanded and the resources in the North Austin neighborhoods that feed Connally shrank, the campus characteristics changed. Connally now more resembles an urban school than a suburban campus; according to demographic statistics compiled by The Texas Tribune before the COVID-19 pandemic, 65.3% of Connally’s students are economically disadvantaged, compared with less than 50% for the Pflugerville school district as a whole.
Those circumstances look familiar to Howie, who previously served as head coach at Willowridge High School in Fort Bend County and Westbury High School in Houston.
“Our situation reminds me a lot of Houston,” Howie said. “You have a lot of kids here who sometimes come out of difficult circumstances and don’t necessarily come from that home environment that lends itself to success In a post-school setting. So as coaches, we take that responsibility that sometimes you have to be a father figure, sometimes you have to be a counselor, and sometimes you have to be a mentor. You have to do what you need to do to make these kids have a good experience and grow as human beings.”
The team has certainly grown on the basketball court, where it’s positioned to claim its first district title since 2012. Howie credits the players for the team’s success, saying he’s “just the beneficiary of a group of guys that have been here for a long time and understand how to play the game the right way.”
“Our team is young, but they love to play the game of basketball,” he said. “They’ve played together for a long time, so there’s a certain level of chemistry that was there long before I got here. I’m just coming in and trying to add a little something as I can and make sure, defensively, that we’re consistent on the little things every night.”
Those little things on the defensive end are adding up to a big season, said Cougars guard Jordan Wright. The junior, who’s in his second varsity season, scored 13 points against East View and helped spearhead a pressure defense that forced 23 turnovers. Connally’s ability to convert those turnovers into transition points was especially evident in the first half, when the Cougars built a 36-17 lead by the break.
“Coach is on us, having us running and holding us accountable,” Wright said. “He makes you play defense. That’s what we do; we want to be a defensive team, so we trust in the coaches and are buying in to what they’re saying. Keep working hard every day; that’s all we want to do.”
Being a ‘model’ program
The Cougars had to especially work hard against a resurgent East View program led by second-year coach Drew McDorman, a Wimberley graduate and the son of veteran coach Jeff McDorman, who came out of retirement to serve as an assistant for his son. East View (21-8, 5-2) has already set a record for most wins in a single season, and the Patriots are on pace to reach the playoffs for just the second time in program history. Earlier this season they picked up a milestone win with a first-ever victory over crosstown rival Georgetown.
McDorman says his squad “is the most balanced team that I’ve been a part of,” which should help East View maintain its playoff positioning as the regular season enters its final stretch. Braxton Mezger had 10 points and seven rebounds against Connally, and Jakson Derr added nine points and eight rebounds. The team could also soon get a boost from point guard Tony McIntosh, who has been sidelined by an injury but could soon return.
“This is a team that’s grown so much,” McDorman said. “They’ve played a lot of games together over the last two years, and their level of trust and level of love for one another and spirit of competitiveness is through the roof. They all have one goal. No one cares about how many points they get; they just want to win for each other.”
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Connally showed its grit by winning despite the absence of two of its best players. Star sophomore Mekhai Bryant, a 6-foot-5 wing who leads the team in rebounding and ranks second in scoring, played limited minutes after leaving the game with two curious technical fouls, including one for hanging on the rim while trying to jam home an offensive put-back in traffic. Ryan Phelps, a 6-4 forward who leads the team with 12.4 points a game, did not play.
“We didn’t crumble, and we didn’t fall apart,” Howie said. “We showed we can play when we face adversity. Other guys stepped up. This was a good test for us heading into the rest of the season and into the playoffs.
“Basketball season, there’s up and downs, and you have to weather the storms. I was proud of my team tonight, because we weathered a storm and stuck together against a very good East View team.”
It’s that type of tenacity that has Howie excited about his players, on and off the court.
“With Coach Burton coming in, I think all of us will be on the same page as far as accountability, as far as academics, as far as work ethic and as far as doing things the right way,” he said. “Right now, in basketball, we’re moving in that right direction. I hope we can be a model for what he (Burton) is trying to accomplish.”
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Boys basketball team shows promise of new Connally athletics era
