Hank Matthews seemed to be ascending the college basketball coaching ladder ahead of the curve compared to others in his peer group. At 30, with successful stops already at Lincoln College, Columbia College in Missouri, and, most recently, McKendree University, Mathews seemed close to paying off all his dues to get to the next level.

Next stop, a Division 1 school somewhere out there as the head guy, right?

While Matthews’ next job is as a head coach, it will be at the high school level at Collinsville. Isn’t this a step down the ladder? Not the way Matthews sees it.

“It’s an opportunity to be a head coach,” Matthews said, “at a place with a long legacy of excellence, of great pedigree. I thought hard about it, and for me it just seemed the right decision. I want to inspire young men to be excellent and I want to take a great program and put my own stamp on it.”

Matthews certainly has basketball coaching excellence in his family tree. His father, Eddie, is an Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Famer, with Hank having played under him at Limestone Community High School in Bartonville. His grandfather, Don, was also an ICBA Hall of Famer, who coached several Illinois high school teams, having the most success at Brimfield in the 1970s.

After playing basketball at Columbia College and graduating with a bachelor’s degree in American Studies and a master’s in education, Matthews spent the next eight years climbing that college coaching ladder. While he said he has nothing but good memories at all his previous stops, you get the sense that maybe the rat race of college coaching was beginning to wear on him.

In talking with many coaches in the surrounding area the last few months, I’ve started to hear growing frustrations with the new frontier of collegiate athletics. Players can come and go as they please through the yearly transfer portal, making it difficult for coaches to play any more than one year out. And now players can be lured away by promises of name, image and likeness offers or “salary cap” payments from wealthier schools.

Coaches want to mold players, but it’s becoming harder to do when many of them only stay for one or two years. At least that can still be done at the high school level. Over and over, Matthews uses the word “relationships” as a cornerstone of his coaching philosophy. It’s harder to build those with players as an assistant, standing behind the head coach while he draws up plays on the sideline.

“Maybe I can just flat out make a bigger impact with kids with this new job,” Mathews said. “I’m very passionate about basketball, about building relationships. Collinsville is a great place to be as a head coach. It’s an honor. I have a lot to live up to. But I really want our program to be a place where teammates really take care of one another, really connected together. I think it’s when guys really care about each other that great teams are made.”

Mathews takes over for Darin Lee, who stepped down after 16 years for personal reasons. With more than 2,200 victories, Collinsville ranks second in Illinois high school basketball history. But the Kahoks are coming off a rare losing season, 15-17, in 2024-25.

What kind of basketball does Mathews want to play? Actually, he isn’t concerned about X’s and O’s right now. For the next few months, it will be all about moving to the Collinsville community and, you guessed it, building new relationships.

Mathews is not yet a certified teacher at the high-school level, so he plans to first work as a dedicated substitute teacher at Collinsville while coaching basketball. Maybe this will be just another stop in his coaching journey, but the way Mathews talks, he seems to want it to be a nice, long one.

“I love when you’re in a community where everybody feels connected, and that’s the kind of place Collinsville is,” he said. “When it’s 3 o’clock every day, I want our practice floor to be a place players really love to be. I want this to be a place of laughter and fun, not boot camp. And, of course, I really want to win.”