Huckabee earns WAW Boys Basketball Coach of the Year

As his team walked off the court after suffering a regular-season-ending loss to Tuscaloosa Academy, Larry Huckabee would have been happy to hear that his Marengo Academy Longhorns would miss a state championship by just three points.

At that point, the Longhorns were entering the region tournament as the No. 2 seed and staring uphill at a climb that seemed insurmountably improbable.

But a pair of wins led Huckabee’s bunch to a region title game with a Patrician team to which it had already lost four times on the season. And once the Longhorns used a strong second half to blow by PA, it suddenly seemed the sky was the limit.

Huckabee ultimately led his team on a five-game win streak that took it from an inconsistent 11-11 to a 16-11 squad with legitimate state title aspirations and the mantle of being the hottest team in Class A.

Using only five players – one of whom was playing hurt – in the state championship round, Huckabee pushed his team through a late deficit in the state title game. The Longhorns will never forget the buzzer-beating three-pointer from Cornerstone’s Q.D. Tinsley that ended that contest, but they will also never forget the incredible run that led them to the that moment in the first place.

The best news for Huckabee is not the fact that he is the 2014 West Alabama Watchman Boys Basketball Coach of the Year. The best news is that he returns his entire squad next season. And, like most of his Marengo Academy coaching counterparts, Huckabee does all of this on a volunteer basis while working a regular full-time job.