In 2017, when Michael Dukes walked into his job interview at Pikesville High School with the athletic director at the time, Larry Ward, the Panthers’ girls’ basketball program was at a fairly low ebb, having won just five games the previous season.
Dukes was a former team captain and scoring leader at Towson University. His coaching background was at private schools. He had served as the head girls’ basketball coach at Towson Catholic before it closed in 2009 and then went on to become an assistant coach at Saint Frances Academy in Baltimore.
If Dukes were to take over the program at Pikesville, he wanted to know how he was going to attract good players. The Panthers were having a hard time doing that on their own.
“One of the things I certainly wanted to know was were there magnet or specialized programs at Pikesville,” Dukes said.
Pikesville is not a magnet school. But it did, in fact, offer magnet programs, such as Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID), which is a college preparatory program. And that allows students from outside of the school’s traditional boundaries to attend Pikesville.
“That was important to me because I knew it would be tough if we relied completely on [district] kids,” Dukes said. “And I was also aware that, at that point, a lot of [district] kids weren’t even going to Pikesville because there was no track record or history with the girls’ basketball team.”
With a viable path to bring in out-of-district players and with his deep connections in both the private school and AAU worlds, Dukes accepted Ward’s job offer and quickly began the task of transforming tiny Pikesville High School, with fewer than 1,000 students, into a girls’ basketball juggernaut.
The Panthers entered the 2025-26 season 159-25 since Dukes took over as coach ahead of the 2017-18 season, with only one of their losses coming to a Baltimore County public school (Hereford in January 2022).
Last March, Pikesville beat Southern-Garrett, 67-62, in the Class 1A championship game to win its fifth consecutive state title, matching Eleanor Roosevelt (2005-2009) and Brooklyn Park (1985-1989) for most consecutive girls’ basketball championships in Maryland.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I believe that we would have five state titles at this point,” Dukes said. “We actually could have six in a row. The year that COVID hit, we were in the state semifinals before everything shut down. We were in the final four [in Class 1A] and never got to play.”
Pikesville is now trading blows with private schools and some of the top teams across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. The Panthers travel to play in high-level tournaments.
Dukes has elevated the program by attracting top players from outside the district and convincing the good players who live in the district to stay, a formidable task not long ago. Roughly half of the roster is comprised of players who live in Pikesville.
Senior point guard and four-year starter Mariah Jones-Bey, the Most Valuable Player in the state tournament last season, lives in Reisterstown. She was on the private-school track and headed for Saint Frances before Dukes convinced her to play at Pikesville.
“When I went to the school to see the team, they were very open. They were like a very close family,” said Jones-Bey, who is on track to surpass 1,000 points and 500 assists at Pikesville this season. “I wanted to be a part of that. Everyone had good energy.”
Meanwhile, 6-foot-1 sophomore center Qaidence David, a rapidly improving player who is already attracting attention from Division I colleges, according to Dukes, was happy to stay closer to home.
“I just really like Coach Dukes’ coaching style,” David said. “He is very understanding, and I just like how the team is balanced. I just like how balanced the schedule is and how balanced the team is all together.”
Pikesville’s run of success has turned it into the little school that everyone wants to beat. The Panthers tend to get everyone’s best shot and find a way to win anyway.
The team tries not to take all that success for granted. If Pikesville is going to win a sixth consecutive state title this season, the players and coaches realize it will require hard work, togetherness and determination, among other things.
“You know, we need to stay grounded and focused. Grounded and focused,” Dukes said, repeating it for emphasis. “Our mindset is we are going to work harder. We know that people are certainly trying to amp it up and that bull’s-eye on our back is bigger. It’s bigger than ever.”
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Michael Dukes
Issue 296: December 2025 / January 2026
Originally published Dec. 17, 2025