March 2009 Archives

Memo to Big 10 commissioner Jim Delaney, all Big 10 coaches not named Tom Izzo, the cheerleaders on the Big 10 Network and flag-waving fans who still believe the conference ranks any better than fifth or sixth among the elite basketball leagues in the nation:

Michigan State is in a class by itself. All the rest of you need help, lots of it.

Let's be objective. That's a word you don't often hear when the subject of the Big 10 vs. Big East or ACC or Big 12 or Pac-10 or SEC comes up for discussion. But think for a minute.

After observing this weekend's NCAA tournament games, do you think there is a player, any player, on the Illinois roster who could break into the starting lineup at Connecticut, North Carolina, Villanova, Pittsburgh or Louisville?

In all of my 50 years of covering high school sports, one of the most amusing stories I witnessed involved the late Mendel Catholic football coach Lou Guida.

Guida was as successful as he was colorful and profane. He produced a Prep Bowl championship team in 1968 and sent several players to the Big 10.

After one victory, his team was celebrating in the locker room. After considerable revelry, Guida stepped to the middle of the room, asked for a moment of silence and called for a priest.

"Okay, Father, let's have the (blinking) prayer," Guida said.

Whether you were sitting in Carver Arena in Peoria or in front of your television set in your living room, you'd have to agree that the Class 3A and 4A tournaments were exciting and thrilling to watch, everything the Illinois High School Association hoped they would be when it adopted the four-class playoff.

Here are some observations from an old-timer who has observed the state tournament since Hebron and the Judson twins beat Quincy in the first televised event in 1952:

* Wouldn't you like to take the floor with a starting lineup that includes Jereme Richmond, James Kinney, Marcus Jordan, Colin Nickerson and Rayvonte Rice? They were the five most productive players last weekend.

* Dick Campbell, Tim Lavin's old high school coach at York and a former assistant at Illinois, must have been proud as the Champaign Centennial coach guided his team to the Class 3A championship.

Everybody is weighing in on the controversial uniform issue that resulted in a technical foul and free throw that supposedly spelled the difference in North Lawndale's one-point loss to Champaign Centennial in the Class 3A semifinals on Friday in Peoria. So I guess I'll contribute a few words on the subject.

Get over it.

Blaming North Lawndale's loss on the technical foul is like blaming the Johnstown flood, as many old-time Pennsylvanians used to say, on a leaky faucet in Altoona.

As a viewer, I never even associated the final score of the game to what happened before it started until it was over.

Of all the basketball games you have ever attended in person, watched on television, listened to on the radio or read about in newspapers or magazines--high school, college or professional--have you ever, repeat ever, been made aware of a team that was poorly coached?

Never. Repeat never.

Every team is well coached, right? Have you ever heard Dick Vitale comment that a team is poorly coached? Did Billy Packer ever claim that a team was anything but well coached? On the IHSA network, has any high school team been said to be poorly coached?

Folks in southern Illinois are complaining in the wake of Seton Academy's overwhelming victory in the Class 2A basketball tournament.

They don't think it was fair for Seton, a Catholic school whose two best players transferred from another Catholic school, to be playing in 2A, that it was tantamount to give the Los Angeles Lakers a spot in the NCAA.

They were relieved when last year's Class 2A champion, North Lawndale, was moved to 3A this season based on its growing enrollment. But Seton, according to Chicago Sun-Times high school reporter Mike O'Brien, might be even better. In fact, they might be good enough to be ranked No. 1 in the Chicago area, regardless of class.

The overwhelming majority of the best teams, best players and best coaches in the history of high school basketball in Illinois came from the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s, it says here. And when you examine the record books and scrapbooks, the evidence is compelling and convincing. But there's always room for an argument.

Many who responded to my initial blog about the most successful large-school programs in recent state history noted that the game was better in yesteryear, before the influence of summer leagues and AAU competition turned a team game into an ego trip or, as retired Simeon coach Bob Hambric described, "individualizing."

Here is a look at some of the other great programs and the players who made them great:

I'm a child of the 1950s and I insist the best high school basketball I've seen over the last 50 years was played a long time ago--when Collinsville dominated the 1960s, when Thornridge produced the best team of all time in 1972, when Quincy and East St. Louis Lincoln dominated the 1980s, when Peoria Manual and King dominated the 1990s.

With the exception of Simeon's 2007 team, you don't see great teams today. The caliber of competition in the state tournament, two classes or four classes, isn't what it used to be. And have you seen anyone in the last decade, excluding Shaun Livingston and Derrick Rose, who reminded you of the great stars of yesteryear?

Today's legion of basketball fans, whose sense of historical perspective began in the 1990s, insists old-timers have lost touch with reality, that the great players and great teams of the 1960s and 1970s couldn't play today's style, that today's kids are too athletic, that the game has changed.

For the last four years, Maine South offensive coordinator Charlie Bliss has conducted a free instructional camp that has tutored hundreds of high school football players from throughout the Chicago area.

No longer.

The Illinois High School Association has ruled that Bliss most close his event because (1) it has received five complaints charging that Bliss is running illegal practices, (2) he is showing favoritism to Maine South players and (3) he has allowed more than three players from some schools to participate in the workouts, a violation of IHSA rules.