Manual fights off QND to win sixth state title in program history
- Jonathan Michel
- Mar 14
- 7 min read
CHAMPAIGN — For the Manual Rams, overcoming adversity to win has become a tradition.
With the Rams having all the momentum, leading by double figures and eight minutes separating them from a state title, it appeared that they might be saved from having to grind out another victory.
Quincy Notre Dame had other plans, making the Rams’ hearts skip a beat and foreheads sweat in the final few minutes. However, Manual showcased its fierceness and fearlessness to win Saturday’s Class 2A state championship game 60-55 over the Raiders.
The Rams will need to make room for their sixth state championship trophy, which was their first since 1997. Only Chicago Simeon (seven) has won more state championships in Illinois.
“Coming into Manual, you go in our gym and you see those pictures up on the wall and a lot of these guys are sometimes too young to know who they are unless they've seen them before or someone's told them,” Manual head coach Marvin Jordan said. “That's a big deal because it gives them hope that they could be guys on the wall.
“To be here right now, it's just a great testament of the work that we have put in and these guys believing and buying into the system.”
The Rams faced a gauntlet of challenges from the Raiders in the fourth quarter.
Manual led 42-29 after three quarters, but a three-point play from QND’s Beau Eftink capped a 10-2 run from the Raiders to cut the deficit to 44-39 with 5:48 left.
The Raiders closed the gap to three points but a layup from Manual’s Jaquan Brown gave the Rams a bigger cushion. Immediately after Brown’s layup, Rico Booker stole the inbounds pass and Tahj Tolliver converted a huge and-1, running into the corner and flexing his muscles in celebration, to push Manual’s lead to 51-43 with 3:34 left.
What later grew to a 10-point advantage, however, still wasn’t enough to completely put away the resilient Raiders.
A three-point play from QND’s Robbie Reed and a triple from Gavin Doellman closed the gap to 57-53 with 1:28 to go. The Raiders, who forced seven turnovers in the fourth quarter, came away with a steal which Reed finished off through a foul to make it 57-55 with 42 seconds left.
QND scored 26 points in the fourth quarter after taking two-and-a-half quarters to score its first 26.
“They weren't going to stop battling and I knew that, but I ain't gonna lie, a couple of those possessions, I felt I didn't have a heartbeat or something,” Jordan said. “It was just like, ‘What's going on? What just happened?’”
Adding to the legacy
QND retained possession with an offensive rebound after Reed’s missed free throw. However, two suspenseful bids to take the lead with a three were off the mark and Josh Humbles shut the door for good with three free throws in the final 20 seconds to win.
Humbles finished with 14 points on 5-for-6 shooting with four rebounds. As he was fouled for the second time, he emphatically flipped the ball aside as if to say ‘Enough with this.’
The final battle in a season full of them was complete.
“We're resilient, we persevere and fight through whatever adversity we have to,” Jordan said. “I knew that the run was coming from those guys and they weren't done. They’re well-coached over there and they played hard.”
Jordan went to state twice with Manual as a player and finished second both times. His wait to win a state title is over.
Realizing that he’s now part of a hallowed group of Manual coaches — Dick Van Scyoc, Wayne McClain, and Telfer Mead — to win state titles nearly brought him to his knees.
“At 34 years old, to be named with those names, it’s awesome,” Jordan said. “I'm ecstatic because these will be conversations for years to come.”
He paused, leaned over, grinned while fighting back tears. Pointing up to the sky, he gave a shout out to Sir James Watson, a Manual legend who passed away in April 2025.
“All those days walking in that gym and seeing championship pictures up there and I'm coaching, it's like, ‘Okay, when are you going to put one up there?’ Now we did, this is crazy.”
The impact of being one of Manual’s greatest teams wasn’t lost on the players either. They’ll forever be immortalized with a photo and banner hanging above Coach Van’s Court.
“[It means] everything because we worked our butts off this year, we just stuck together as a team,” Humbles said. “It showed on the court today that we could be whoever we [want], as long as we play hard, work hard, have team chemistry and to be great altogether.”
“To get to leave out of here as a winner, as a champ [and] to go in my gym and go see me on that wall whenever I come back, it feels amazing,” Manual's Reggie Postlewaite said.
What can Brown do for you?
Saturday’s title game mirrored Manual’s state semifinal win in several ways. Both teams traded the lead back and forth throughout the first quarter with one Ram in particular shining early.
In the semifinals, it was Postlewaite. On Saturday, it was Brown, who scored nine in the first quarter with a corner three and a trio of fastbreak layups to help the Rams exit the first frame knotted at 15.
The Rams battled foul trouble early again too as Humbles picked up two fouls in the first quarter and Postlewaite joined him with his second foul early in the second. QND threw the first big punch of the game with a 6-0 run capped by a lob layup to Jace Allensworth to go ahead 23-17 with 4:33 to go in the second.
But the Rams held the Raiders scoreless for the rest of the first half as a jumper from Humbles, a shot from Brown, a three-point play from Tahj Tolliver, who finished with eight points and eight assists, on a driving floater and a Humbles layup comprised a 9-0 spurt that put Manual ahead 26-23 at halftime.
“They work hard,” Jordan said. “Like the stuff I ask these guys to do, they do it every day. They're coachable and I'm glad we were able to get it done.”
The Rams continued their strong run into the second half as a layup from Tolliver plus and-1s from Humbles and Brown gave them 16 unanswered points and a 33-23 lead. At that point, Manual owned every ounce of momentum in the arena.
“We were definitely fearless since the jump ball,” Postlewaite said. “Even since being in the locker room, we were fearless.”
QND eventually broke the seal, but Brown showed the toughness and grit of a junkyard dog on a driving layup to put the Rams back up by 10 and finished off another lay-in on an assist from Humbles to make it 39-29 Manual with 2:01 left in the third.
Brown finished with a team-high 23 points on 11-of-14 shooting. He also made Manual’s only three-pointer of the game
“He was just obviously all over the place,” Jordan said. “He's a big catalyst for us and him keeping his composure allowed everybody else to keep theirs. Because if he doesn't, he doesn't show up big for us late in that game. But the way he did it was just amazing.”
“When I woke up, I was kind of nervous, I had the bubble guts,” Brown said, smiling. “In the layup lines, I was kind of emotional a little bit [but] I took my emotion on the court and was playing fearless and angry.”
“We always kept each other up”
Manual, which finished the season with a record of 25-9, didn’t often have it easy in its 2025-26 campaign.
The Rams played a schedule made almost exclusively of Class 3A and 4A schools and suffered a stretch of three losses in four games and separate three-game losing streak in January. Saturday’s win was proof that being battle-tested was all worth it.
“I use the word lose, but amongst these guys, we don't use that; we use it as a lesson,” Jordan said. “So a lot of those games that we lost early, we learned there are things that we need to work on, things that we need to fix. Through the course of the year, we did those things.
“It's great to see that now at the end, we can look back and understand that those progressions that we did make, they counted.”
Postlewaite, who finished with seven points, four rebounds, three assists, two steals and two blocks, was one of several Rams to experience setbacks during their career, including last year’s fourth-place state finish. For him and his teammates, every one of those was worth it to get to the Class 2A mountaintop.
“Since day one freshman year all the way to now, we always worked hard,” Postlewaite said. “We always worked hard, stayed together, kept each other composed, uplifting each other, kept each other going all through practice.
“When we were losing, we always kept each other up and that's what made us get this victory."
Manual’s path to a possible repeat will look different with Postlewaite, Humbles, Brown, Jaemel Shipp and Percy Norris all graduating. However, it elevates the floor for the future of five freshmen on the varsity roster, who aim to keep the Rams’ winning tradition going.
“I believe that I got a lot of freshmen on that roster that just became champions today,” Jordan said. “This is letting us know that the work that we are putting in in this program is working and that it will continue.”
Following a raucous celebration on the court with their fellow students, the Rams went into the tunnel, smiles still beaming from their faces. Several minutes later, multiple players grabbed their phones and made phone calls to their friends and loved ones.
When asked who they were informing that they just won a state title, they responded.
“The whole world.”
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