September 2008 Archives

In talking to a veteran high school basketball coach the other day, I mentioned that Larry Butler, the longtime head coach of the Illinois Warriors' AAU basketball program, no longer was employed by Nike. Depending on your source, he was either fired or resigned. Now Mac Irvin of the Chicago Fire and Tai Streets of MeanStreets are Nike's representatives in Chicago.

"You made my day," the coach said.

Butler was employed by Nike for 13 years. He built one of the strongest AAU programs in the country. He helped to produce 19 NBA players, two Olympians and 11 assistant college coaches. The list includes Andre Iguodala, Jon Scheyer and Jerrance Howard.

He claimed his decision to leave was based on the fact that he no longer was on the same page with Nike's new management. When Nike asked him to co-exist with his rival AAU coaches, Irvin and Streets, he said he couldn't and wouldn't. So Nike severed their longtime relationship.

My wife and I are 1958 graduates of Blue Island Community High School, now Eisenhower. Last weekend, with more than 100 other former classmates, we celebrated our 50th class reunion on the old campus and at the Doubletree Inn in south suburban Alsip.

It was an eye-opening experience in several respects. Many of us hadn't seen each other since we graduated so it was a wonderful time to renew old acquaintances and catch up on the life stories of so many who came from California, Arizona, Montana, Texas, Florida, South Carolina, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York to be part of the event.

It began on Friday with a tour of the old school, a pizza party and the Oak Lawn/Eisenhower homecoming football game and extended to a Saturday night dinner attended by 220 and a Sunday farewell brunch.

Call me a cockeyed sentimentalist but the state high school basketball tournament hasn't been the same since the Illinois High School Association moved it from Assembly Hall in Champaign to Carver Arena in Peoria.

I said it then and I'll say it again: Assembly Hall is an architectural masterpiece; Carver Arena is just another gym.

So you can imagine my reaction when the issue of Assembly Hall's future was raised. Should it be renovated? Can it be renovated? Or should it be replaced by a new basketball facility?

You don't replace the Lincoln Memorial.

I've been observing high school football in Illinois for more than 50 years and I must confess that the St. Rita team that humbled Mount Carmel 35-21 last Friday was, for one game at least, as good as any team I can remember.

For me, the gold standard is Bloom's 1957 team that featured Leroy Jackson, the three-time state sprint champion who later played for the Washington Redskins, and also included several other outstanding athletes, including Homer Thurman, Chuck Green and Roger Elliott.

Two other pre-playoff teams were exceptional. In 1971, St. Rita coach Pat Cronin produced a two-time Prep Bowl champion with Billy Marek and Dennis Lick and Evanston's Murney Lazier fielded his best team that didn't include injured three-time state sprint champion Howard Jones.

Recruiting analyst Tom Lemming of CBS College Sports and I have been friends since the late 1970s. We agree on most subjects, especially the recruiting process, but we agree to disagree on three issues that are frequent topics of conversation on the Internet.

1. Lemming predicts that Notre Dame will once again be a national power in a year or two.

I have serious doubts.

2. We agree that the Big Ten has hit a low point in comparison to other major conferences in the country.

Loren Tate and I go back a long way. He doesn't even remember the first time I saw him. He was called "Sonny" in those days. He was pitching for a semi-pro baseball team in Lansing, Illinois, and I was a batboy for the Calumet Park Troublemakers, his opponent at the time.

We crossed paths again briefly in 1966. He was being hired as the new sports editor/columnist at the Champaign News-Gazette and I was leaving the rival newspaper, the Champaign-Urbana Courier, to take a job as the high school sports editor at the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

We've agreed to disagree on several issues over the years. But we've also come to the same conclusions on others. That's what the newspaper business is supposed to be all about. I have my opinion. You have yours. Let the reader decide for himself.

Since he resigned from the Sun-Times, controversial sports columnist Jay Mariotti has been the target of many critics, even at his former newspaper, who railed at his negative writings and his personality flaws.

Now it's my turn.

I don't know Jay Mariotti. In all of the 17 years he was at the Sun-Times, we never sat down for a chat, never broke bread. I think I talked to him on the telephone only once or twice, very briefly.

I believe giving credit where it is due. And the fact is Bill "Flash" Flanagan, who has been evaluating high school basketball players in Illinois for more than 30 years, was talking about freshman point guard Antonio "Bobo" Drummond of Peoria Central before anyone else knew how to spell his name.

Drummond made a recent splash at an exposure event in suburban Chicago. It wasn't his first coming-out party. For nearly two months, Flanagan has been touting the 5-11 youngster as "the best young player to come out of Peoria since Shaun Livingston."

"I saw him at the A.J. Guyton Shootout at Peoria Central in mid-July. He was playing with D.J. Richardson and he looked like he belonged with him," Flanagan said. "You wouldn't have known he was a freshman. He looked like an upperclassman. He has great maturity and plays under control."

Last week, two of the winningest coaches in state football history--Evanston's Murney Lazier and Geneseo's Bob Reade--were honored when their schools re-dedicated their playing fields in their names. You have to wonder why it took so long.

Evanston is doing it up big-time. The alumni, headed by former Evanston stars and NFL players Mike Kenn and Emery Moorehead, raised funds to pay for a new artificial turf, a new lighting system and a new scoreboard. The first night game in school history will be Friday night against Maine West.

After traveling thousands of miles and evaluating hundreds of high school basketball players during the spring and summer, nationally respected recruiting analyst Van Coleman of Hoopmasters.com came to some interesting conclusions:

*Illinois-bound Brandon Paul of Warren can become the point guard that Illini coach Bruce Weber is looking for--but he may not be able to step in as a point guard in the Big Ten as a freshman.

"I didn't see a better shooter who played the 1 and 2 guard positions," Coleman said of Paul. "He doesn't take bad shots. He showed so much improvement in his ability to put the ball in the basket. He has point guard skills but he is a shooter first."