Before Jerry Lucas, before Paul Walker, before Butch Carter, before the still-a-state-record 76-game winning streak, there was Royner Greene and his 1943-1944 Middletown Middies.
Led by seniors Chick Boxwell and Howie Schueller and junior Will Smethers, Greene’s Middies lost just one game on their way to capturing the first of the school’s seven Ohio high school boys basketball state championships – which is tied for the most in history.
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Middletown clinched the groundbreaking championship with a 50-47 overtime win over Toledo Woodward at Columbus Public Auditorium on March 24, 1944, but the Middies’ might’ve posted their biggest win a week earlier when they knocked out previously undefeated St.