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Staunton coach Ty Laux stands in front of his team’s bench during a Nov. 26 game vs. Jersey at the Roxana Hoopsgiving Classic. Laux is the 2026 Telegraph Small-Schools Boys Basketball Coach of the Year.<\/p>\n
Greg Shashack \/ The Telegraph<\/p>\n
Staunton coach Ty Laux reacts to a play during a boys basketball vs. Calhoun on Dec. 20 at Staunton.<\/p>\n
Greg Shashack \/ The Telegraph<\/p>\n
STAUNTON \u2013 Staunton Bulldogs boys basketball set a school record with an 18-game winning streak.<\/p>\n
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The Dogs also broke the school record they set a year earlier for wins in a season while finishing 29-4. Another program first came when Staunton broke into The Associated Press state poll with a ranking getting as high No. 5 in Class 2A.<\/p>\n
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That season, ranking behind only the state championship celebrated by Staunton in 1993, made Ty Laux the 2026 Telegraph Large-Schools Boys Basketball Coach of the Year. He also won the award last season after the Bulldogs went 28-5.<\/p>\n
A season-ending defeat in a sectional semifinal for the second successive year was disappointing, but the rise of Staunton basketball continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had bigger goals than this,\u201d Dogs senior Bryce Coalson said after a 52-49 loss to Rochester at the Pleasant Plains Sectional. \u201cEveryone, we didn\u2019t want it to end here. But we had a great season. Won conference, won county, won the holiday tournament, won the Winchester Tournament, school record wins in a row, school record wins. There\u2019s a lot of things that we can be proud of.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
All those accomplishments, Laux assured his team, were not diminished by a sectional setback.<\/p>\n
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\u201cOne game doesn\u2019t define your season,\u201d Laux said at Plains. \u201cThese kids, every night, they came out and competed hard. They did that tonight. We had some chances, just came up a little short.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
With four starters returning, Staunton figures to get another chance in 2027. Isiah Laux, the coach\u2019s son, Jeremiah Graham, Luke Moore and Lucas Dillon all are back for a senior season after all broke into the varsity rotation as freshmen.<\/p>\n
Laux, who averaged 16.3 points per game as a junior, enters his final high school season with 1,298 career points to rank No. 3 all-time at Staunton. Graham averaged 12.4 ppg, Moore averaged 10.2 ppg and Dillon averaged 6.5 ppg while running the offense at point guard.<\/p>\n
The Bulldogs, who set another school record by making 321 3-pointers led by Coalson\u2019s school-record 107 3s and 103 from Laux, repeated as South Central Conference champions. The Dogs take an 18-game SCC win streak \u2013 another school record — to next season.<\/p>\n
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The back-to-back regional championships were Staunton\u2019s first since 1986-87. But the Bulldogs lost a sectional semifinal for a fourth time in a row \u2013 they fell to Rochester in 2001, Greenville in 2009, Williamsville in 2025 and Rochester again in 2026 \u2013 since their postseason march to Champaign won a Class A state title with a 27-4 record in 1993.<\/p>\n
The Bulldogs are loaded for more March Madness next in 2027, despite the graduation of Aaron Bodner, who played in a school-record 125 games in a four-year varsity career, and Coalson. \u201cLosing Bodner and Coalson is going to be huge,\u201d Ty Laux said.<\/p>\n
The season brought Laux his 100th win at Staunton to push his career record to 263-232 from 17 seasons starting with one year at Winchester and nine years at Civic Memorial before his seven years at Staunton, where he is 115-86.<\/p>\n
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The Bulldogs enjoyed a brilliant run in 2025-26 and next season projects as being brighter. The final outcome vs. Rochester in the sectional was a letdown.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut,\u201d Laux said after that loss, \u201cwhat a season. I\u2019m proud of our guys.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Staunton coach Ty Laux stands in front of his team’s bench during a Nov. 26 game vs. Jersey…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":819740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[351912,64,63,726,44,85],"class_list":["post-819739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-altgame","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}