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Galesburg job brings Reynolds back to the Quad-City area

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By Jon Gremmels | Tuesday, April 15, 2008 3:14 AM CDT | () comments

Mike Reynolds was announced Monday night as the new boys basketball coach at Galesburg High School, and he is no stranger to the Western Big Six Conference or to basketball in the area.

Reynolds has coached the past five years at Bismarck-Henning High School near Danville, Ill., but he played high school basketball at Orion. After two years at Black Hawk, he transferred to Teikyo Marycrest (a now defunct NAIA school in Davenport) for the 1995-96 season and played for TMU and Marycrest International the next two years.

Before heading to the Danville area, Reynolds served as an assistant coach at Cambridge and United Township high schools. He was on Scott Olson's staff at United Township, as well as at Danville High School, where Olson coached from 1999 to 2006. Although he continued to teach in Danville, Reynolds became coach at Bismarck-Henning in 2003, and his teams there recorded a combined 118-39 record in five seasons, including four 20-win seasons. Olson even served as his assistant in 2006-07 before getting hired this past year at LaSalle-Peru.

Chad Dare, a former Times' correspondent who now is the sports editor at the Danville newspaper, said Reynolds was a defensive-minded coach and that fans should expect his teams to play tough man-to-man defense.

Bismarck-Henning went 29-3 this past season and was ranked fourth in Class 2A. It bowed out in overtime in the sectional final against Olney East Richland, which finished third in the 2A state tournament. The Blue Devils started five seniors, according to Dare, including 6-foot-10 Trey McCorkle, an Indiana/Purdue-Fort Wayne recruit. McCorkle and Murad Abbed both earned IBCA all-state honors. The impressive record wasn't simply because it had a 6-10 player, though, according to Dare. He said the Blue Devils went 9-1 during a stretch in which McCorkle was out with an injury, basically using a five-guard attack.