Individual basketball talent runs deep again in Peoria.

River City high school boys hoops finds itself amid a renaissance, with eight area players committed or likely to commit to play Division-I college basketball. Several more underclassmen could emerge as elite college recruits as they make more of an impact on the varsity level.

Most of the seniors are familiar names — Richwoods forward/center Lathan Sommerville (Rutgers), Peoria Notre Dame guard/forward Eoin Dillon (Belmont), Metamora forward Cooper Koch (Iowa), Illini Bluffs forward Hank Alvey (Lehigh) and Morton guard Evan Barlow (Florida Gulf Coast) — while rising juniors are now bursting onto the scene.

The class of 2025 features Metamora guard Matthew Zobrist (offers from Bradley, Illinois State, Eastern Illinois, Bryant), Manual point guard Dietrich Richardson (Illinois, Bradley, Vanderbilt, Wisconsin-Green Bay, Indiana State, Bryant) and Peoria High forward Leshawn Stowers (Southern Illinois, Eastern Illinois, Incarnate Word).

These recruits hold the unofficial responsibility to continue the tradition of being from what author Alexander Wolff once dubbed the “cradle of the crossover.”

“This is great for the city of Peoria,” said A.J. Guyton, a Peoria High all-stater who went on to become an all-American at Indiana and play in the NBA. “To be able to go out on a Friday night and watch some quality basketball with some quality basketball players. It’s good to see the gyms filled with people who want to witness it.

“It’s good to see everybody competing at a high level. … I’m excited about it.”

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The glory days of the 1990s

A crop of these many high-level players hasn’t been seen around the "P" since the mid-90s to early 2000s.

Take the 1996 Journal Star Class AA all-area team as a prime example. Guyton was joined on that five-player honor squad by the Manual duo of Marcus Griffin and Sergio McClain; city scoring leader Mike Robinson of Richwoods; and Mark Vershaw of East Peoria. All five of those guys went on to have prolific playing careers in the Big Ten Conference.

This means fellow Big Ten recruits like Manual's Frank Williams and Galesburg's Joey Range were relegated to the second team along with mid-major recruit Jason Jenkins of East Peoria and Division III players Korey Coon of East Peoria and Tony Pippin of Limestone.

Let that sink in.

“Right now, the mecca of the state in basketball is Peoria and central Illinois,” Chicago-area talent scout Larry Butler told the Chicago Tribune in 1996. “Nobody can even argue about that. It's the truth. Every time they get a chance to play a Chicago-area team, they display that.”

Two years later, there were 18 D1 area players, freshman through senior, who saw minutes during the 1997-98 college basketball season. All-conference picks, all-Americans and even league players of the year all came from that group.

Chuck Westendorf has coached maybe more soon-to-be Division-I players from Peoria than any other person in the last 30 years. He was an assistant for the Manual four-peat, then was an assistant under Chuck Buescher at Peoria High when future NBA player Shaun Livingston led the Lions to back-to-back Class AA state championships.

“The timing's everything," said Westendorf, who coached at Manual under his father-in-law, Dick Van Scyoc and Wayne McClain, "and there for about, you know, 12-14 years, the talent just kept coming in throughout the area."

“It was just year after year (having) Division-I players and so that kind of became a recruiting area that most college coaches stopped and visited several schools. They just didn’t come to Manual or Central or Richwoods. They came around to visit other (area) kids, also.”

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Westendorf says in the late 1990s, pretty much any college coach you could imagine was seen in a Peoria gym. Legendary coaches like Mike Krzyzewski, Bobby Knight, Roy Williams and Gene Keady were mainstays across the city.

The relationships between the high school and college coaches grew and became more comfortable.

“That was quite an era,” Westy said. “… I don’t know if it will ever be the level it was.”

Bringing it back to that level

Guyton is doing his best to help return Peoria basketball to its heyday.

As the Peoria Public Schools director of K-12 athletics, Guyton wanted to get to this point and admittedly has come quicker than he expected. The former Indiana all-American says the district-wide programs he’s been implementing within the junior highs come with a heavy emphasis on accountability and development.

“Those are a couple of the things that are helping this thing grow faster than we thought it would,” he said. “… It’s working so far. Still not where we want to be, but so far, so good.”

Before coming home to work for PPS, Guyton spent a year as an assistant on the Loyola (Maryland) men’s basketball coaching staff. When out on the recruiting trail for the Division-I Patriot League program, he got razzed by his coaching colleagues about the absence of talent from the Peoria area.

There was very little he could say in rebuttal.

“I would get teased about that on the road about how good we used to be,” the Peoria High grad said, “and, ‘We don’t have anything in Peoria.’ I used to bear the brunt of that.”

That has changed dramatically in recent years with several of the former Chicago Bulls draft pick’s connections making the trip to see players.

“Now, I’m bragging,” he said. “… That makes me smile.”

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As rare as this may be, at least one Manual guy agrees with a Central guy.

Guyton and former longtime Manual coach Derrick Booth are in lockstep about the central Illinois basketball reemergence. Booth, who now works as Carle Health's Trillium Place executive director of community services, says the recent talent boom only helps bolster the reputation of Peoria basketball — in the city or just outside.

“It’s good to see this level of talent in Peoria,” Booth said, “because what it does, for one, it promotes the city of Peoria. When individuals play at a high level and are getting recruited at a high level, because we are a sports town, especially in basketball. It puts us back to that level."

In his 16 years with the Rams, Booth has seen his fair share of college recruiters in and out of Manual’s gym with most of them looking for that certain type of player from Peoria.

“Talent also attracts opportunities,” he said. “It means something when someone has talent, and they play Peoria basketball or come from one of the Peoria programs. For a college coach, they know the individual is well-coached. They know they’ve played against a level of competition.

“That’s attractive to them. When we’re able to have Division-I talent at the capacity that we have at it now, it draws the interest of other college coaches.”

Boys vs. girls

Local girls basketball has steadily seen its fair share of next-level talent.

This year is no exception with a trio of seniors all set to play in the Division-I ranks. Peoria High’s Aaliyah Guyton — daughter of A.J. — is heading to Iowa, while Mya Wardle of PND is signed with Eastern Kentucky and Julia Sollberger from Dunlap will head off to Northern Illinois.

Former Harlem Globetrotter Curley “Boo” Johnson has hosted a youth basketball camp for the past 16 summers, gathering an array of the most talented prep players from far and wide to serve as his coaches. He then tracks those athletes during their respective high school and college seasons on the camp Facebook page.

“As long as I’ve been associated with high school (basketball),” Johnson said, “the girls basketball has been better leaps and bounds than the boys. Without a doubt."

In the decade-and-half time, the once "World’s Greatest Dribbler" has watched area girls teams win a combined seven state championships by Richwoods (2008, 2018), Morton (2015, 2016, 2017, 2019) and Brimfield (2022).

“The girls have been better,” Johnson said. “It’s not to say the boys are bad. The girls have been better. Just had more success. Team success, that is.”

However, the resurgence of boys college prospects has been very positive, according to the Greater Peoria Sports Hall of Famer.

“It’s refreshing to see," he said, "that’s for certain."

Could this be the year?

Teams outside of Peoria have experienced state championships in the last decade, getting a Class 3A state title from Metamora this past March and Brimfield claiming the 2015 Class 1A championship.

This, however, hasn’t been the case for teams within the city limits.

In fact, this is the second-longest title drought Peoria has experienced in nearly five decades. (The longest is Peoria High winning the 1977 Class AA state championship, then Manual hoisting the first of its four AA crowns 16 years later.)

It’s not as though these four Big 12 Conference teams (or Peoria Quest, which lost in double overtime of a 2018 1A supersectional) haven’t come close. Both Richwoods (2023) and Peoria High (2013) have just one regional since 2012, losing in sectional title games in each of their respective seasons.

PND came close to the 3A Final Four in 2014, falling in the super, while Manual has a pair of state trophies in the last nine years (2016, third; 2019, fourth).

Also, COVID-19 spoiled Manual playing PND for a 2020 3A sectional title.

Sommerville, Stowers, Dillon and Richardson all will have the opportunity to end that famine. But it will take outstanding play from those four stars along with some team cohesiveness and a little luck to claim the city’s next state title.

“Winning a state championship takes more than an all-stater or two,” Westendorf said. “You have to have a blend of kids that play well together. They’re unselfish. They know how to guard somebody and stop somebody. The coaching enters into it a little bit, also.

“Not just your best player because your best player some night may go 1-for-12 or miss some big free throws.”

Adam Duvall is a Journal Star sports reporter. Email him at aduvall@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @AdamDuvall.

This article originally appeared on Journal Star: Peoria basketball renaissance: Elite talent renews city hoops fervor