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East Hartford celebrates beating Windsor 69-65 during the East Hartford vs Windsor boys basketball CCC finals on Monday, March 2, 2026, at the University of Hartford in West Hartford. (Jim Michaud/Hearst Connecticut Media)
EAST HARTFORD - From the far corner of the East Hartford High School gym, a beat is generating in 4/4 time. With a snap on the snare, drummer John Wireko launches the band into "Land of 1000 Dances."
Across the floor, in front of the East Hartford boys basketball bench, a beat is generating in 3/4 time. Huddled arm in arm, rocking side to side, coach LeRon Gittens calls and his players respond.
"I got you! I GOT YOU! You got me! YOU GOT ME! We got us! WE GOT US!"
Time will tell just how long the East Hartford Hornets will dance in this 2026 CIAC boys basketball tournament. Two rounds remain before Championship Weekend, starting with Thursday night's Division II quarterfinal game against Newington.
But if the Hornets continue to groove as they have this postseason and nail the Hallelujah Chorus high notes as they did in Monday night's buzzer-beater against Bloomfield, then this uptempo show that has made ESPN Sports Center's Top 10 plays and drawn the accompaniment of the school band and filled its home gym to standing-room capacity could bring down the curtain next weekend at Mohegan Sun Arena.
And if that happens, it would indeed be a generational feat. Multi-generational: East Hartford has not won a state championship in boys basketball since 1944.
"It's been around that long?" wondered East Hartford senior guard Zasheem "Dougie" McCoy after hitting his 40-foot wonder-of-wonders from half court to beat Bloomfield.
"1944?" said fellow senior guard Malachi Hymes, who handed the ball off to McCoy on the fateful shot. "That's crazy!"
Crazy to think Connecticut has been staging a state championship tournament in boys basketball since 1923 and that East Hartford hasn't won it since beating Manchester Trade 48-33 in 1939 and Branford 39-37 in '44, a few months shy of D-Day.
A 58-46 championship loss to New Britain followed in 1949. Since then, despite significant star wattage that included the likes of future NBA pro Will Solomon (1998) and 2006 Gatorade Player of the Year Doug Wiggins, East Hartford has been back to the state finals only once.
That was in 2017, where a 20-point loss to Hillhouse ensued. The banner for that runner-up season hangs in a corner of Dandley Gym.
"We don't like that, though," said senior forward Kehari Walker. "We're going to try to get us one for the champions."
The 2026 Hornets have already ended one long championship drought. They knocked off nine-time Central Connecticut Conference champ Windsor 69-65 to land their first league title since 1998, the year the tournament first was staged.
The crown was claimed at a jam-packed, 4,000-seat Chase Family Arena at the University of Hartford. The big crowds followed the Hornets back home for the first two state tournament games.
Ranked No. 4 in the GametimeCT state poll and holding the No. 3 seed in the Division II tournament, East Hartford ran past No. 30 Farmington 66-37 in the first round, then needed McCoy's magic to get past No. 14 Bloomfield 54-53 in the second.
The Hornets stand at 23-3 going into Thursday's quarterfinal with No. 6 Newington (19-5), which got its own ESPN Sports Center Top 10 buzzer-beater to top Hillhouse 66-64.
For East Hartford, dramatic victories in high-intensity games have thickened the skin and bolstered belief.
"We've had a lot of close ones, and each time we were able to pull those games out it gives us a little more confidence that we have the resolve, even when the game is close, even when the times are tough," Gittens said Monday night.
"Like, today. Bloomfield did a great job on defense, they gave us no space, so we had to make tough shots. We didn't shoot as well, but we had the confidence that if we continue to press, we'll be able to win the game."
Gittens, a New London native, is in his third season at East Hartford. He stands 6-foot-10. In the early 1990s, he played at Quinnipiac.
Arriving from Bloomfield's Academy of International Studies, Gittens inherited an East Hartford team that liked to run and gun, mostly from distance. Gittens was fine with the pace, but fine-tuned the shot selection.
The transition took time. East Hartford went 8-12 in 2024 and suffered first-round losses in both the CCC and CIAC tournaments.
In 2025, building around Walker and a cast of juniors who had been playing together for years, Gittens saw his team find its footing with a 10-game winning streak. The Hornets finished 17-7, reaching the Division II quarterfinals before bowing out to Trumbull, 64-61.
"We started to win games and we made a good run in the states and they started to believe," Gittens said. "They believed in our goals, they believed in my vision of how we should play, the way we were going to be most effective."
Gittens describes his team as "a collective." The jet-fast McCoy, averaging better than 20 points a game, is the leading scorer. Walker, with a strong inside-outside game, has been good for 18 points, eight rebounds and a handful of blocked shots a night.
Walker's boards-and-blocks partner in the paint is senior Zahrion Gilzene, the "horse" who makes the hustle plays, as Gittens describes him. Hymes and fellow senior Anthony Akerson round out the starting five.
"You're seeing that connectivity from well before I got here," Gittens said. "All I did was nurture it and tell them how we could make it better."
A better team has attracted bigger crowds. It's also brought out the band.
Though a common sight at college basketball games, school bands are a rarity in high school hoops. Usually, it's just football. Once the Hornets captured the CCC, though, it was time to kick out the jams.
"It's been a while since we've been super-competitive with the boys basketball team; I don't remember us winning anything huge," said East Hartford band director Greg Hoyt. "We also haven't done this is my 10 years here, so I said, 'Hell, let's do it; let's put it together and do a whole thing.'"
The set list features everything from "Tear It Up" by Yung Wun to "Danger Zone" from Kenny Loggins. The "Rocky" theme of choice is "Gonna Fly Now," not "Eye of the Tiger."
Hey, when you haven't gained the top step in 82 years, the shelf life on a sequel has expired.
"When I got here three years ago, we'd get 60-80 people at the gym," Gittens said. "They weren't behind us, but it took a lot of traction and it takes winning games.When you win games, everybody wants to be a part of it, and the energy tonight was just electric.
"This is how we want our gym to be, right?" Gittens added. "When I was in high school, this is what we played in front of. So to have it back this way, it's just a beautiful feeling."
This article originally published at East Hartford boys basketball banding together in quest for 1st CIAC title since 1944.
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