From a 74-Year Drought to the Floor of a State Final: Santino Haney

Every featured story we tell on this platform comes back to the same idea: talent only matters if the right people can see it. Santino Haney's story is an easy one to tell — not just because of the numbers, but because of who was standing on the sideline calling the plays.

Haney is a Class of 2027 point guard at Steubenville High School in eastern Ohio, where this past winter he led the Big Red to a 26–2 record and the program's first appearance in a state championship game in 74 years. The coach who guided that run? His father, Mike Haney.

01 The Coach's Son

For the Haneys, basketball is a family business in the most literal sense. Mike Haney is the veteran head coach of the Steubenville Big Red, and Santino grew up in his father's gym — eventually becoming the floor general his dad would build a historic team around.

Coaching your own son to the edge of a state title is a rare kind of partnership — measured not in one magical March but in a decade of early mornings, hard coaching, and the trust it takes for a father and son to push each other and still ride home together.

02 A Season for the History Books

The 2025–26 Big Red finished 26–2 and reached the state tournament for the first time since 1952 — a trip so long in coming that Harry Truman was still in the White House the last time it happened. When the team left for Dayton, it did so with a police escort. The school canceled classes for the final, and fans who had watched the 1951–52 squad were in the stands to see Steubenville return to the sport's biggest stage.

Haney was central to every step. In the state semifinal, Steubenville held off Akron Archbishop Hoban 60–58, with Santino filling the box score: 13 points, eight assists, eight rebounds and five steals.

03 Heartbreak in Dayton

The final nearly became a fairytale. Down ten in the second half to Trotwood-Madison, the Big Red clawed all the way back, and it was Haney who sank the free throw that gave Steubenville its first lead with 22 seconds left inside a packed University of Dayton Arena.

It didn't hold. Trotwood answered with 8.6 seconds to play. Steubenville called timeout, and Haney drove the length of the floor with the season on his shoulders — but the shot rimmed away as the horn sounded on a 48–47 loss. He finished with 16 points, six rebounds, four assists and four steals. Heartbreak, yes — but a season that rewrote the school's record book.

04 A Point Guard's Point Guard

What makes Haney's game compelling isn't a single highlight — it's how it has evolved. As a freshman on a young, rebuilding team, he simply outscored everyone, leading the entire state of Ohio in scoring for the Class of 2027 at 19.8 points a game. As the roster matured around him, he gave shots up, settling into the role of distributor and averaging better than six assists a night while the team surged to 21 wins.

By his junior year he was doing all of it — leading the Big Red in points, rebounds, assists and steals at once, the kind of high-basketball-IQ profile that gets a player recruited faster. Scouts at Prep Hoops have called him one of the best pure point guards in his class, and a free-throw stroke in the 80s only sharpens the picture: this is a guard a coach can trust with the ball when the game is tight — exactly what college coaches look for.

05 What Comes Next

Haney enters his senior year as one of the more accomplished guards in eastern Ohio, and the recruiting interest has already started — he holds early Division II offers, and his summers with the Midwest Basketball Club have put him in front of college staffs against top competition. A 4.6 GPA only widens his options at the next level.

For the family that poured everything into this program, the 2026 run was both an ending and a beginning — the close of a historic team and the start of Santino's final high school chapter.

06 Why His Story Matters

Haney's path is exactly what High School Basketball Portal was built to document: a player who competed, won, and kept his recruiting story in one place where coaches can find it. For the parents watching their own athletes chase the same dream, his durability is a reminder that the long game matters as much as the next bucket — the thinking behind our approach to keeping young players healthy, and a theme worth every parent's attention in our recruiting playbook for parents.

That is the whole point of a verified profile: get discovered, stay healthy, and keep your options open. The best time to be in the pool is before a coach goes looking — not after.

Sources: Player stats, honors and bio per information provided by the Steubenville coaching staff. Tournament and award reporting from the Herald Star, Times Leader, Weirton Daily Times and Salem News; OPSMA / OHSAA postseason announcements (2026); and scouting via Prep Hoops. Figures reflect public reporting at the time of writing.