Adrian Floyd walked down the hallway at Washington High School last week, pulled the trophy out of the glass case, then walked it back down to the gym and displayed it at midcourt.

To Floyd, the 1995 sectional championship trophy signifies more than a moment in time. At the time, he was a junior for the Continentals, who won the City tournament and were attempting to win the program’s first sectional championship in 13 years.

“I remember George (McGinnis) and Steven Downing and John Sherman Williams coming and talking to us,” Floyd said of the tournament run 29 years ago. “They were coming and checking on us and wanting to know how we felt. It was a big deal because it hadn’t been done in so long.”

Floyd, an assistant coach at Washington, represents a tangible link to past basketball glory at Washington, where banners of McGinnis, Downing, Williams, Floyd’s former teammate, Jack Owens, and many others hang on the wall above the court. The Continentals awakened the echoes of those glory years Saturday night with the program’s first sectional championship since that 1995 season with a victory Saturday over Christel House in Class 3A Sectional 28 at Beech Grove.

Floyd’s former Washington teammate, Robert Williams, texted him a photo of himself pointing at the scoreboard after the Continentals defeated host Southport for the 1995 sectional championship. The score: 67-48. The score of Saturday’s win over Christel House: 67-48.

The players on this year’s Washington team joked with Floyd he can put that 1995 trophy back in the trophy case.

“Every day he was talking about it,” Washington senior Dave Leye said with a laugh. “That’s why we had to go get our own.”

Washington (14-12) will attempt to go one step further than that 1995 team when the Continentals play last year’s state runner-up, Guerin Catholic (20-7), in a Class 3A regional at Greenfield-Central on Saturday. But even by extending the season one week further, the Continentals have already inspired memories of an era when Washington was one of the state’s most feared and historic programs.

“Truth be told,” said Washington 6-11 senior Clem Butler, “the last couple of years we were like the laughingstock of IPS. It does show what you can do when you improve as players and improve as a team.”

Back to the future

Floyd remembers the sea of purple and white. He remembers the Hinkle Fieldhouse floor shaking. “Like an earthquake,” he said.

Scott Hicks, now the athletic director at Washington, had one of the prime seats in the building as assistant athletic director at Butler, sitting at the scorer’s table. Hicks had grown up on the westside and would have gone to Washington if his parents had not sent him to Cathedral.

Washington coach Aaron Hogg was also inside Hinkle Fieldhouse that day, though his seat was much farther away from the court. Hogg was 14 years old and had recently moved from football-crazy Texas. His cousin wanted to show him what Indiana basketball was all about.

“That was the first basketball game I ever went to in Indiana,” Hogg said. “That’s when I found out basketball was a religion here like football was in Texas.”

The scene on March 11, 1995, is one treasured by the 11,000-plus standing room only crowd, players, coaches and anyone else lucky enough to see it in person. Sixth-ranked Washington, after winning the sectional championship, was matched up against westside rival and No. 1 Ben Davis. The teams had just two losses between them — Washington in double-overtime at Terre Haute North and Ben Davis to Kevin Ault and Warsaw in the championship of the Hall of Fame Classic in New Castle.

Adding to the emotion of the game was it was slated to be the final year for Washington after IPS voted in December of 1994 to close Washington and Howe to save an estimated $2.2 million. But on the basketball court, there was little that could stop the Continentals. Senior guards Owens and Williams combined for 35 points a game and the frontcourt of 6-4 junior Marcus Reedy and the 6-7 Floyd were also capable scorers. Chris Sutton, a 6-8 senior, was a strong rebounder and defender for coach Joe Pearson.

But Steve Witty’s Ben Davis’ team, a state finalist the previous year, was the considered the best team in the state. In addition to Damon Frierson, who would go on to win IndyStar Mr. Basketball after the season, the Giants featured a frontcourt of 6-6 James Patterson and 6-7 Courtney James.

“We had all been playing basketball together since junior high,” Floyd said. “The year before (in 1994), we lost in the City championship to Cathedral and in the sectional to Howe. So, when we came back the next year, it was payback time. That was our goal — win City, win the sectional. And our goal was to win state. Of course, we met Ben Davis and that last-second shot happened.”

The teams battled back and forth with the sunlight shining through the Hinkle windows. Owens made two free throws with 7 seconds remaining to give Washington a one-point lead. With Frierson covered, Ahmed Bellamy raced up the left side of the floor and let it fly from the left wing.

“It looked like an airball when he let it go,” Hicks said this week. “Then it just kind of curved at the last moment.”

Swish. Ben Davis 79, Washington 77. The Giants staved off Cathedral that night in double overtime to win the regional, then went on to win the program’s first state championship.

The Continentals, with realistic dreams of matching the 1965 and ’69 state champions with one of their own, were heartbroken.

“The biggest thing is we knew the school was closing,” Floyd said. “That made it hurt even more. Me and Reedy were juniors, but we didn’t have a chance to come back. That was it.”

Reedy and Floyd enrolled at Lawrence Central at seniors and led the Bears to a 21-3 record and No. 4 state ranking but again lost a heartbreaker, this time in an overtime upset to North Central in the sectional semifinal. With only one year, though, it was not quite the same.

“We were a family at Washington,” Floyd said. “Just some kids from the inner city who wanted to do something special.”

A little like this team.

Continentals return to relevance

The 6-6 Hogg, who played at Warren Central and Wichita State, is in his fourth year at Washington. He led the Continentals to an 18-win season two years ago, but last year’s team dropped to 6-18 and lost to Cardinal Ritter by 22 points in the sectional semifinal.

“When I first came here, I told them I didn’t want to come here and recruit a bunch of seniors and juniors, win a few games and move on,” Hogg said. “We wanted to start in the sixth grade and start building the youth programs. That’s what we’ve been building over time but also, we have kids who have come in and showed the kids what it means to work hard and do the right things. They have started this program.”

One of those players is the 6-2 Leye, perhaps an unlikely leading scorer. Leye was cut from the middle school teams at Chapel Hill and as a freshman at Ben Davis. He never gave up on his basketball dreams, though. Leye set up cones for outdoor drills, working on dribbling and shooting by himself. He transferred to Washington for his junior year to give it another shot.

“It was heartbreaking because when you love something and somebody says you can’t do it, that hurts,” Leye said. “But something about me, even though I don’t show it all the time, is that I don’t like to be told ‘no.’ When somebody tells me I can’t do something, I really want to show them I can do it. When I heard that ‘no’ something rang in my head that I can’t stop now.”

Floyd and Hogg both point to Leye’s spirit and work ethic as a major reason for Washington’s turnaround. He is averaging 11.7 points and 2.6 rebounds, but his impact goes beyond the numbers. The same goes for Butler, who was at one time cast aside as a project. Floyd got him to come out for the cross-country team as a sophomore and he lost 40 pounds. Butler now averages 9.1 points and 7.9 rebounds and is coming off a sectional championship game that saw him finish with 23 points, 23 rebounds and five blocked shots.

“When you have kids with that type of mindset,” Hogg said, “it’s a blessing. Top-level talent doesn’t matter as much if they have that A-plus mindset. Then it’s contagious and spreads through the rest of the team. That’s why we are where we are. It honestly eliminated some of the people who should be on this team and are not. They couldn’t walk that tight line. It’s hard to walk in somewhere late when you have guys in there sweating already and ready to go.”

Other key players for the Continentals are sophomore Roosevelt Franklin (11.4 ppg, 4.3 rebounds) and seniors Malique Starks (9.8 ppg, 6.0 rebounds) and Jordan Stratton (9.7 ppg, 2.8 rebounds). Washington trailed by 16 points in the first quarter of the sectional semifinal against Purdue Poly before rallying for a 63-50 win.

“We got a spark from Roosevelt and that ignited through everybody,” Leye said. “Once we were on, we really didn’t step off the pedal.”

‘It means a lot to put on that Washington jersey’

The most famous of the Continentals, McGinnis, died in December at 73. McGinnis, Mr. Basketball in 1969, led Washington to the state championship as a senior before going on to a professional career that would put him in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

The night after McGinnis died, Washington upset Tech, 59-57.

“We showed up and beat them,” Leye said. “It means a lot to put on that Washington jersey. That’s what we want to show. Instead of us being underdogs, we want people to look at us like, ‘Oh, Washington is that good.’”

Washington, seeded 11^th in the City tournament, served notice again by knocking off sixth-seeded Purdue Poly by two points and taking out third-seeded Tech again in overtime in the quarterfinals. In early February, Washington lost to Saturday’s opponent, Guerin Catholic, by 21 points. But it was a three-point game at halftime. Butler fouled out and scored four points.

“My flip switched about 10:30 p.m. Saturday night,” Hogg said. “We were already watching film, getting ready for Guerin and game planning.”

Leye joked that his “flip didn’t switch quite as fast.”

“(Saturday night) felt like a lifetime moment,” he said. “Words can’t even explain it. We wanted that trophy in our hands so bad. That’s why we had so much energy after the game even though we were dead tired.”

There was no way to know 29 years ago that winning another sectional title was even possible. When the school closed at the end of the 1994-95 school year no one knew it would reopen. McGinnis watched that game in 1995 from inside Hinkle Fieldhouse.  

“The memory of this game will last forever,” McGinnis told then-IndyStar columnist Bill Benner in 1995. “And that’s what the people of Washington will take with them.”

Almost 30 years later, the Continentals have another memory. And another trophy for the trophy case.

Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649.