New coaches, same standards: Heights, Maize keep winning ways to state showdown
The paths looked nothing alike, but they led to the same place.
When two of the Wichita area’s proudest boys basketball programs take the floor for a Class 6A state quarterfinal at 8 p.m. Wednesday at Koch Arena, both Wichita Heights and Maize will do so under first-year head coaches who inherited winning traditions in very different ways.
Heights coach Gary Thomason was the insider, the longtime lieutenant who helped build the machine. Maize coach Zach Bush was the outsider, the new voice tasked with stepping into an established program and convincing players to embrace a different way of doing things.
Different backgrounds. Different challenges. Same result.
Now Thomason’s fifth-seeded Falcons (19-5) and Bush’s fourth-seeded Eagles (20-5) will meet with a trip to the 6A semifinals on the line in a matchup that doubles as a study in how strong programs survive coaching change.
“Most of the pressure is self-imposed,” Thomason said. “There’s an expectation around here. The standard is the standard. And I honestly think it’s easier to maintain a culture than to build one. I feel like I’ve been handed the keys to the castle and I just try to keep that good name synonymous with good basketball players who work hard, play hard together and are good students and good people.”
That perspective makes sense for Thomason, who is in his 19th season overall with the program. He wasn’t just familiar with the culture when he took over last spring after Joe Auer was essentially forced into retirement because of a USD 259 pension stipulation. He had helped live it for nearly two decades.
Thomason had been on the bench for five of the six state titles won under Auer. Over the last three years, with Auer retired from the classroom, Thomason was already handling much of the day-to-day operation inside the building and communicating with players during the school day.
“The kids know the expectations with us,” Thomason said. “They understand basketball doesn’t just start at 3:30 for practice. It starts every day when you walk in the door at 8 a.m. When kids understand that process, things go well for us.”
That contuinity has helped Heights stay exactly where it always expects to be this time of year. The Falcons are back at the state tournament for the sixth straight year and are seeking to advance for the fifth straight season. At Heights, getting to state is not the goal. Winning it is.
And Thomason said one of the biggest reasons the transition has gone smoothly is that Auer never really stopped being a resource.
“What has been incredibly helpful has been coach Auer himself,” Thomason said. “He’s always there if I have a question or a situation comes up and I’ll ask him, whether it’s X’s and O’s, about officials, about other teams.”
Auer still attends games and, according to Thomason, even calls to ask if it’s alright to stop by practice.
That role reversal still makes Thomason laugh.
“It’s so weird for him to be asking me for permission,” Thomason joked. “That never used to happen.”
Bush’s challenge at Maize was vastly different.
When longtime coach Chris Grill retired to follow his sons’ basketball careers, Maize turned to a coach from outside of the program, even if Bush’s roots in the area made him far from a stranger. The former Maize South and Andover assistant had spent the previous two seasons at Bellevue West in Omaha, where he was part of a program that went 45-9 and won a state title in 2024.
Many Wichita basketball fans also knew Bush from his summer success coaching the AfterShocks to The Basketball Tournament championships and the $1 million prize this past August.
But success in summer basketball and success as a first-time high school head coach are different assignments, especially when taking over a healthy program with an identity already in place.
“It’s not like I was walking into a program where it was broken… this was a place where they had a ton of success,” Bush said. “These guys deserve so much credit for buying in from the beginning. It didn’t feel like I had to do much convincing. I’m not a salesman. I’m just trying to teach what I think is winning basketball.”
That buy-in was essential, especially from senior star Brayden Myovela, Maize’s top player and tone-setter. Bush said with Myovela leading the way, the rest of the roster followed.
“When your best player is also your best defender and does everything the right way, it’s huge for a new coach,” Bush said. “It makes it so easy to tell the younger guys, ‘OK, this is what an all-state guy looks like and this is how hard he works.’ That really helped the buy-in process.”
Coming from Nebraska, where coaches have summer and fall sessions to work with players, Bush said it was an adjustment to only have limited work with his players in the summer. And then Maize’s deep football playoff run further shortened the preseason runway before he had most of his varsity players together.
So much of the teaching had to happen on the fly, in the early weeks of the season. That helps explain why Bush believes Maize has continued to grow into itself this season.
“There are games where we are far from perfect, but we defend our tails off and give ourselves a chance to win,” Bush said. “I think somewhere along the lines of January is when we kind of figured out, ‘This is who we are.’”
The Eagles have built their season around suffocating man-to-man defense that is allowing just 45.2 points per game. In fact, the only team to score more than 56 points against Maize this season is Heights, which won 65-55 in early December.
Heights, of course, defends too. The Falcons allow just 51.5 points per game and smothered their two sub-state opponents to an average of 35.5 points to make it back to Koch Arena.
On paper, Heights appeared to wobble late in the season with three losses in four games in mid-February. But Thomason said those results were tied directly to injuries and illnesses that kept key contributors sidelined.
Now, for the first time since December, Heights is whole again.
That’s an important development for a roster led by senior guard Jalihn Timmons, one of the state’s most dangerous scorers at 21.1 points per game. He is flanked by his younger brother, Jordan Timmons, who scores 10.1 points, junior big man Tyson Phillips, who averages 11.3 points and 11.1 rebounds, sophomore guard Ahjaylyn Walker and senior forward Jorell Hadley.
Myovela is the do-everything force for Maize with averages of 11.8 points, 6.6 rebounds, 4.3 assists and 2.3 steals, while 6-foot-7 junior forward Karson Miles leads the team in scoring at 12.2 points with 6.3 rebounds and 2.2 blocks. Maize also had steady contributions from senior Ty Willits, junior Pearce George, junior Kingston Lerma, junior Charlie Oakman and senior Cooper Shaw.
“Their defense has become very, very good,” Thomason said of Maize. “I thought it was good before, but it’s gotten, dare I say, elite now. And they’re more efficient offensively and there’s a lot of sets to scout. Zach’s done a tremendous job with them.”
Bush, likewise, said the first meeting offers only so much insight more than three months later.
“Heights is Heights,” Bush said. “We have a great belief in ourselves, but we also have so much respect for that program. We’re definitely hungry and would like to play better than the first time we saw them, but that’s a program we really respect.”
When these two teams met in December, they were still learning a new head coach. Now both are back where they expect to be, proving there is more than one way to keep a tradition alive.
And if Wednesday’s quarterfinal unfolds the way the defensive numbers suggest, it could come down to which first-year coach can get his veteran program to execute just a little bit better than the opposition.
This story was originally published March 11, 2026 at 6:02 AM.
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