Wimberley brought title glory to northeast Arkansas town

Smiles were glued to the faces of Jaron Burrow and Brayden Nunnally during Manila’s press conference inside Bank OZK Arena in Hot Springs following their Class 3A boys state title game victory over Bergman on March 11.

However, the biggest grin unequivocally belonged to Coach Lee Wimberley. Considering he’d just led the Lions to their biggest win in more than 60 years, no one could blame him.

“We have a lot of good kids, a lot of incredible support from the town, from our community, from our school,” he said after his team outlasted the Panthers 61-57 in the lone overtime game of the championship weekend. “I’ve got a lot of good kids that play the game of basketball the right way.”

Manila’s sideline leader coaches the game of basketball the right way, too, which is one of the reasons why he’s the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette All-Arkansas Preps Boys Coach of the Year.

Wimberley was an assistant at both Cabot and Wynne under Jerry Bridges and Bobby Gross – two coaches who’ve won state titles – for a combined 10 years until he assumed the reins at Manila in 2012. Although he’s won more than 70% of his games, he’d never led them to a state championship until recently.

No one on the Lions’ staff was around the last time the team won a title in 1962. Manila hadn’t even advanced to a final in 13 years when Bill Taylor took them to title game in 2012.

Manila won its first 11 games but a 7359 loss to Forrest City on Dec. 16 started a three-game losing streak. Among those defeats was also a 59-46 setback to Bergman in a game that Wimberley said was both humbling and helpful.

The Lions dropped just two more contests after that, both by two points apiece to Osceola and Newport, respectively. Manila, which hadn’t played in a state tournament since 2018, won its first three win-or-go home games by a combined 31 points before getting the rematch in the title tilt against Bergman.

A lot went the Lions’ way in the final, including a 45-foot buzzer-beater at the end of the third quarter. But when the game-ending horn officially sounded, Wimberley had helped permanently eliminate a few years’ worth of heartache for not only him, but also everyone involved with Lions basketball.