Edgewood's Caden Huttenlocker, North's Connor O'Guinn find Division I basketball homes

They could have ended up in New Orleans and Rhode Island.

Instead, a pair of hometown connections gave Edgewood grad Caden Huttenlocker and Bloomington North grad Connor O'Guinn a chance to continue their college basketball careers at the Division I level, but much closer to home.

Huttenlocker is headed to Indiana State, a program rebuilding with a new head coach and a revamped roster after a run to the NIT championship. That game took place in Hinkle Fieldhouse, O'Guinn's new home court as a member of the Butler Bulldogs.

Here's how they got there:

Caden Huttenlocker moves from JUCO to ISU

Back in 2022, Huttenlocker decided to defer his Division I dreams for a while, signing with Lincoln Trail, a junior college in Robinson, Illinois. As a sophomore, the 6-foot-2 guard averaged 13 points, five rebounds and 2.1 assists per game and kept his shooting eye intact, hitting 38% from the 3-point line.

"Caden was an absolute joy to coach," LTC coach Junsie Cotten said. "To see his growth from his freshman to sophomore year is a testament to his work ethic and who he is as a person.

"He led our team in scoring this year, but more importantly he was our hardest worker.  I am extremely grateful to have coached him the last two years."

The feeling was mutual.

"Being at Lincoln Trail, I'll forever be grateful to them," Huttenlocker said. "Coach Cotten gave me a platform to continue my dream. It taught me to be grateful for what I have and to always persevere.

"It taught me how to be a winning player, doing whatever the team needs outside of scoring the ball. It taught me about being an athlete over there. The game is much more athletic than in high school. It was an adjustment. It's a lot more fast paced, more athletic guys. It's harder to do just about anything."

So he was ready to take the next step after two years and New Orleans coach Mark Slessinger, coincidentally an Edgewood grad, had a Division I offer ready for him. But there was one drawback.

"It's very far away from home and I was not sure that was something I wanted to do," Huttenlocker said. "So I began reaching out to other schools, trying to stay at the D-I level. But outside a few small conversations, I never got offered a spot anywhere really."

Mustang connection pays off

That changed when ISU went through massive turnover, with head coach Josh Schertz leaving to take over at Saint Louis. Assistant coach and White River Valley grad Matthew Graves was tabbed to take over and as one of his staff hires, lured Slessinger back to Indiana.

"Whenever he got the job at ISU, with my coaches helping me, we immediately started talking to him on the spot," Huttenlocker said. "Indiana State is such a historic program. Growing up in Indiana, basketball has always been a big part of my life and Indiana State, it's a dream to go play there, especially with another Edgewood guy in Coach Slessinger."

If this story sounds familiar to Edgewood basketball fans, let's go back to 2019 when another Edgewood sharp-shooter, Cooper Bybee, took a similar route, turning a solid two years at Olney Central College into a walk-on spot at Indiana under Archie Miller (more on him in a bit).

Oddly enough, Bybee was on a visit to Slessinger's program in New Orleans when he got the call from IU's staff.

This time, Slessinger ended up getting his man.

"They're getting a guy who is going to be a great teammate and a coachable player," said Huttenlocker, whose younger brother Carson is heading into his senior season at Edgewood with his own college dreams. "I'll do whatever I possibly can for the program on and off the court.

"It doesn't even feel real yet."

O'Guinn picks up the phone: 'I got a call from a random number'

Back to Miller. He's the head coach at Rhode Island now where Bloomington North grad and former competitive weightlifter Paul Woelmer is the Director of Basketball Performance and Connersville native Chandler Graves is the Director of Basketball Operations. Assistant coach Ben Sander also worked at IU with Miller, whose camps O'Guinn had attended.

So O'Guinn had plenty of connections with the Rams, who brought him out for a visit and a preferred walk-on offer. Several local Division III schools, DePauw, Franklin, Earlham and Lawrence (Wisc.) also had strong interest. Rhode Island and Lawrence were just too far away and so he had narrowed his choices when the phone call came.

It was May 13 and in just two days, he had to have the deposit in to secure his spot at the school he'd chosen. He was out and his phone started ringing. He looked down and saw a number from Columbus, Ohio.

"This is spam, I shouldn't pick it up," O'Guinn said. "But then I remembered two weeks back, I got a call from a random number and it ended up being the head coach from Franklin, so then I thought, this could be somebody."

Uh, yeah. As in Butler head coach Thad Matta, whose wife had friends that connected to the O'Guinns. Connor had been reaching out to him to send him game highlights but had gotten no response for a couple of months.

"He's busy, so I wasn't worried about it," O'Guinn said. "Then he got back to me (by email) and said he'd take a look at it. I was expecting that to take another couple of weeks."

But the next day, O'Guinn looked down at the mystery number and picked up.

"I'm glad I did," O'Guinn said. "It was Thad Matta and he offered me on the spot.

"That wasn't even in the cards to commit to Butler by that deadline. But it happened and it's the craziest thing."

Finding home in Hinkle Fieldhouse

O'Guinn has been on campus for just over a month now, working out, playing pickup games and getting to know his new teammates and adjusting to life as a Big East basketball player and all the speed and physicality that comes with it.

He's the most recent Monroe County standout to play for Butler, joining South's Erik Fromm (2014) and Edgewood's Garrett Butcher (2012).

"Butler checked all the boxes," O'Guinn said. "It's an hour away, so I can go home on the weekend. Traveling in the Big East will be cool. I've never really been to the East Coast.

"And for the basketball, being in the best shape of my life, the schedule is set in stone which I like. And Butler is a great school on top of that. I'm set up well. I'm super happy."

His visit up there was his first time in historic Hinkle Fieldhouse, a place his dad had a chance to play in when he was at Broad Ripple. The awe has worn off a bit now. It's just his home floor, but that in itself remains amazing as he gets to work, making himself a Bulldog.

"The first thing you notice with these guys in the amazing athletes," O'Guinn said. "That's the major difference. All of them are physical and super skilled.

"With weightlifting and practice, there was a big transition that I had to handle. But it's great that I get to compete against the best. You can only get better. If you hold yourself to that standard, you're going to improve a lot. I knew it would be really hard to go and do this, but it's been a really great experience."