POSTERIZED! POSTERIZED!

The mighty Groves Spokane basketball family has landed brothers Tanner, Jacob and Dylynn on some seriously exclusive real estate — the Official Hoopfest Poster

It’s a family affair on the Hoopfest poster once again this year. Following in the footsteps of last year’s edition featuring Lacie and Lexie Hull of Central Valley and Stanford, this year’s poster takes flight with the Groves brothers: Tanner, Jacob and Dylynn.

“Basketball was always something that all three of us boys, we just fell in love with the game,” says Jacob, the middle brother. “We played a lot of other sports growing up, but basketball was the sport where our heart was.”

Basketball stole the Groves brothers’ hearts as kids, and then they turned around and stole the hearts of Inland Northwest basketball fans during their time at Eastern Washington University.

In the 2021 NCAA Tournament, the Groves brothers helped the Eagles take the fight to the powerhouse Kansas Jayhawks. Tanner led the way with 35 points, and Jacob added 23 as EWU nearly pulled off the upset.

From there, the two eldest brothers moved on to the Oklahoma Sooners, where they have spent the past two seasons.

“It was definitely a change of scenery to move out of Washington, go to Oklahoma, and experience basketball at a different level,” says Tanner, the oldest. “Now I’m able to appreciate Washington basketball in a sense that I think it’s a bit of a hidden gem. Obviously Spokane and Hoopfest play a major part in that.”

Dylynn, the youngest, remembers watching his older brothers take to the streets at Hoopfest when he was too young to get on the court himself. Now a rising sophomore at Gonzaga Prep, Dylynn is blazing his own basketball trail just like Tanner and Jacob before him.

“We’ve lived most of our lives playing or coaching basketball, it’s something that my husband and I both really enjoyed doing,” says Tara, their mom and a former college basketball standout at Whitworth. “To have them fall in love with it like we did was just really awesome.”

“It’s like a kid’s dream to play Division I basketball, to get to travel around and play in the different arenas and play some of the teams they’ve been fortunate enough to compete against,” says Randy, their dad, and former Shadle Park and CCS player. “They’ve lived that dream, and Tara and I have lived it through their eyes. Getting to experience that as a family is pretty special.”

The eldest Groves brothers have spent most of their careers playing together, from Shadle Park to

Eastern and then onto Oklahoma, but there’s now a fork in their road.

Tanner wrapped up his senior season as a Sooner this spring and now looks forward to a professional career. Jacob, meanwhile, has one year of college eligibility remaining and will be playing his final season at Virginia, for another Inland Northwest basketball legend: former Washington State University head coach Tony Bennett.

“That was one of the things that I think really made the relationship that me and Coach Bennett have just click from the get-go,” Jacob says of their shared local connection.

With Jacob off to the East Coast, Tanner joining the professional ranks, and Dylynn grinding at G-Prep, this upcoming season will see the Groves brothers more scattered around the basketball world than ever before. After graduation at Oklahoma and just before Hoopfest, the trio was able to find their way back to Spokane.

It was the first time since Christmas that the whole family had been back at home, proving true what it says on the poster about how “all roads lead back to Hoopfest.”