The next step for coach Brandon Appleton will be a move to New Haven, keeping him on some purple as the new head coach for the Bulldogs’ boys basketball team, multiple sources have confirmed to Outside the Huddle.
Appleton moves to New Haven after spending the last four seasons as the head boys basketball coach at Angola. The move to the boys side at Angola came after a successful run with the Angola girls. Appleton made the switch to the boys side in 2020.
“It was one of those, where if I didn’t scratch that itch, I was always going to wonder the rest of my life ‘what if’ or if I could have,” Appleton told Outside the Huddle in 2020.
Appleton went 25-60 during his time leading the Angola boys through this past spring. He will become New Haven’s first new boys basketball coach since Bruce Stephens took over in 2014, replacing one of his mentors in Al Gooden. Stephens left the program with just two single digit win seasons, bookending his run with the Bulldogs that included Sectional titles in 2017 and 2020.
Now, the tide will turn to Appleton running the show in New Haven where he will be just the fifth boys basketball head coach in the last 30 years at the school.
Appleton started his Indiana coaching career with boys on the JV level at Scecina Memorial in Indianapolis.
Appleton spent the six seasons leading the Angola Hornet girls to a 111-40 record, including going 21-3 in 2019-2020. In his final season on the girls side, Angola was unstoppable in the NECC winning both the conference regular season and tournament titles without a single NECC blemish along the way behind Indiana Junior All-Star Hanna Knoll.
During Appleton’s time leading the girls program, he never posted a losing record and had won 20-plus games each of his last three seasons. The Hornets won a Sectional title in 2019 and advanced to the night game of the Regional before losing to Marion. In 2020, he was also named an assistant coach for the Indiana Junior All-Stars girls team.
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