By RICH STEVENS
RichBeyondMeasure.com
Wheeling Central senior Eli Sancomb, the reigning Evans Award winner as West Virginia’s top boys basketball player, did not work hard enough as a youngster.
In fact, his dad, California University (Pa.) men’s basketball coach Danny Sancomb, wasn’t convinced his oldest had the moxie to become a star.
“He coached me when I was younger,” Eli said. “One time I messed up a play … in a tournament in Washington (Pa.), I played poorly and he said, ‘you’re not going to make it.’
“On the car ride back, he says ‘all these kids work harder than you,’ which wasn’t true at all. I was probably 12 years old. I would say I was 12 or 13 years old when I started taking basketball seriously.”
Committed to NCAA Division I Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., Sancomb is coming off the Class AA championship and is the first Maroon Knight to be voted the state’s best.
He is a steely eyed basketball assassin whose demeanor belies what most would expect. The intensity comes from dad, calm demeanor from mom – Wheeling Central principal Becky Sancomb – and competitiveness from both. Luke, an 11th grader, has dad’s fierceness and emotional energy. The youngest is 11-year-old Jack, who’s developing his game in travel ball and at St. Michael Parish School in Wheeling. Among their mentors is Chase Harler, a first team All-State player at Wheeling Central from 2013-15.
Everything is in place for all three Sancomb boys to leave the school well decorated, and being the son of a doggedly competitive coach doesn’t hurt.
“I was about Luke’s size (5-foot-7) when I was a sophomore,” said Danny, a late basketball bloomer who averaged two points as an 11th grader (1991-92).
A high energy, emotional bulldog for coach Butch Young at Maryland’s Meade High, Danny averaged 17.8 points and had a school-record 73 steals as a senior to help the Class 4A Mustangs reach the state final in 1993, the program’s first.
Growing 9 inches in two years, he left for Limestone College – seven hours away in Gaffney, South Carolina, before homesickness brought him back. Sancomb took the year off before enrolling at Howard Community College in Columbia, averaging 22 points for the Dragons in his first season.
In year two, he averaged 27 for coach Wheeler Brown, who then joined the Wheeling Jesuit staff under head coach Jay DeFruscio. Sancomb followed Brown to the West Virginia Conference, and, in two seasons for the Cardinals, he scored 1,454 points, was the league’s leading scorer in 1996-97 and 1997-98, and made the National Association of Basketball Coaches Division II All-American team.
Eli’s prep career began, and almost ended, as Wheeling Central’s freshman starting quarterback. A potentially catastrophic helmet to the knee required anterior cruciate ligament surgery and a missed basketball season. A poorly timed growth spurt delayed the operation, bringing more difficult rehabilitation.
“I grew a lot adjusting,” he said, opting to give up the Friday night lights. “I was 100 percent when I came back.”
A broken hand limited his sophomore basketball season to 18 of 26 contests, yet he reached 1,000 career points in 44 games.
“Eli’s just competitive,” Danny said. “Winning is important to (all of them). It’s different when you live with a coach. When I played it didn’t matter, I just wanted to win.
“I have a lot of respect for him … when he plays people get up in his face, they grab and try to frustrate him, and he keeps his cool. He focuses and doesn’t get into pushing contests.”
Sancomb was the 30th All-State first team player from Wheeling Central since 1969 when the school became the first parochial member of the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission. That season, the program debuted in triple-A with 800 fewer students than Parkersburg, which had the state’s largest enrollment.
The Maroon Knights, whose initial SSAC postseason basketball game was in 1971, have been all over the SSAC landscape since 2018 with membership in triple-A (2020-22), double-A (2023-25), and single-A (2019-20).
Listed Class A upon the return of the enrollment-only classification model this year, the Knights exercised their option to remain in double-A. Entering his 23rd season as coach, Mel Stephens has won championships in three decades. He will benefit from two sons of a seasoned college coach for the second consecutive year.
Luke averaged 6.9 points, two rebounds, and 1.3 assists as a sophomore, will serve mostly as a true shooting guard this season, and is expected to replace his brother at point in 2026. Luke had the fourth-most 3-point tries last year on the team and the second-best percentage of players attempting at least 70.
“He has that dawg mentality,” Danny said. “Luke is 100 percent like me.”
That includes his dad’s unmistakable swagger and clear emotional investment in the game, which does not go unrecognized by his older brother.
“I definitely have to slow him down a little bit,” Eli said. “A lot of kids take him lightly because of his size. If he grows like 3 inches, he’s going to be a big, big problem.”
Last March, Eli made a 45-foot 3-pointer just before halftime of his team’s 58-40 championship win over Williamstown. Unlike Luke and his teammates, Eli was stoic.
“After that lucky 3-pointer (Luke) was going nuts and everybody after the game were like, ‘why didn’t you celebrate that?’ It’s because we had one more half to play,” Eli said.
Rich Beyond Measure 