April 2010 Archives

There was a time when Division I college basketball in Illinois was thriving. The programs at Illinois, DePaul, Loyola, Bradley, Southern Illinois, Illinois State, Northern Illinois and even Western Illinois once ranked among the best in the nation.

No longer.

It has been suggested here and elsewhere that one reason is a lot of high school talent has opted to leave the state, filling rosters at Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, California, Indiana, Ohio State, Michigan, Iowa, Purdue, Wisconsin and a lot of places in between.

It certainly is a contributing factor and, arguably, the most significant. But why is that? In the last 20 years, why have so many homegrown stars elected to leave the state?

The Schmidt brothers, Harv and Roy, a couple of independent basketball recruiting analysts who have been fixtures in high school gyms in Illinois and across the country for more than 25 years and operate their own web site, Illinois Prep Bulls-Eye, have a lot of war stories to tell when it comes to doing their job and being competitive in a very competitive market.

At one summer event, the Schmidts were charged $250 for a coach's packet containing names and numbers of the participants. The figure was cheap compared to the $600 and $400 fees that coaches were charged for admission to events in Las Vegas and elsewhere. Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings showed up to see one recruit in one game, refused to pay $400 for the pleasure and walked out.

But it gets worse. And the Schmidts blame the NCAA for creating the problem.

To those basketball fans who admit they don't like things as they are but concede that "old school" coaches and their methods must bow to today's coaching style and AAU-dominated philosophy:

The game isn't as good as it used to be. Yes, there are more good athletes. But they aren't better prepared, fundamentally or technically or mentally or emotionally or academically. Teamwork has been replaced by selfishness. Dunking, not pure shooting, is praised as an art form.

Remember when the Chicago Public League featured iron-willed coaches who taught fundamentals and discipline and teamwork and defense?

Former Rock Island basketball coach Duncan Reid was sitting in a comfortable chair in his living room while I was interviewing him for a chapter in my first book, "Sweet Charlie, Dike, Cazzie, and Bobby Joe: High School Basketball In Illinois."

The conversation turned to one of Reid's biggest rivals, Quincy coach Sherrill Hanks, and he provided one of the most memorable quotes I have illicited from a source in 50 years of sports journalism.

"He built a great program," Reid said of Hanks, "and he wanted you to know it."

Later, when interviewing Hanks at his home in Quincy, I felt he was annoyed by Reid's remark. But I assured him it was my impression that it was made out of respect. The truth was Hanks had built a first-class program that was the envy of every high school coach in Illinois and he wasn't bashful about promoting it.

It is being argued in some quarters -- by those who think the Big 10 is relevant and others who think it is no better than the sixth best conference in college basketball -- that the Chicago Public League is overrated.

Overrated? Compared to who or what? Should the relative strength of a conference be based on the number of state championships it has won or the number of Division I or NBA players it has produced? Does tradition count for anything or does it only matter what Mo, Curly and Larry remember since the Internet was invented in 1988?

It makes as much common sense as the radio talk show hosts who claim Jon Scheyer is an overrated, non-talent because he isn't projected to be selected in the upcoming NBA draft. Forget that Scheyer is one of only five players in Illinois high school history to score more than 3,000 points, that he earned All-ACC recognition and was one of the leaders of Duke's newly crowned NCAA championship team.

It probably wasn't among athletic director Jean Lenti Ponsetto's talking points as she successfully sold DePaul to new men's basketball coach Oliver Purnell. But if he wasn't aware of the issue before he arrived in Chicago, he almost certainly is now.

How can Purnell lure the elite players from the Chicago Public League and Catholic League when so many of them are eager to leave the city to avoid the street gangs and shootings that have turned some neighborhoods into war zones?

For example, why didn't DePaul recruit Marshall's Darius Smith, one of the leading players in the city in 2008-09? Instead, he chose Connecticut, another Big East school. There is no doubt that Purnell has a big selling job go do to keep elite Chicago players at home, as Ray Meyer did with Mark Aguirre in 1978.

First of all, let me preface my comments on the hiring of Oliver Purnell as the new men's basketball coach at DePaul by saying that I believe he is an excellent choice. He proved he could build a successful basketball program at football-crazy Clemson and compete with national powers Duke and North Carolina in the basketball-crazy Atlantic Coast Conference. For the time being, that's good enough for me. And it should be good enough for DePaul.

Sure, Purnell has never recruited a player from the Chicago area. In fact, I thought it was very revealing and slightly amusing that the only coaches he mentioned when the conversation turned to Chicago recruiting were AAU strongmen Larry Butler and Mac Irvin.

Another local AAU coach, Mike Irvin, Mac's son, later said he didn't know anything about Purnell, that he had no ties to Chicago. By the time you read this, I'm sure Mike's father has informed him of Purnell's pedigree.

I wasn't sure about the ground rules so John Brumbaugh, who founded Illiniboard.com in 2000, explained how the game is played. I must admit it is difficult for a sportswriter with 50 years of experience in print journalism to fully understand what the Internet is all about.

"It isn't the job of a fan site to be anything but a fan of the team," Brumbaugh said. "It isn't the fan site's job to be objective. I never claimed my site was objective. We all have biases. I run Illiniboard, not Purdue or Indiana or Iowa. I expect my posters to be cheerleaders, not anything else. There is no in-between when it comes to arguing on the Internet. You are either black or white, never gray. What is the fun of arguing on the Internet if you can't say someone is right or wrong?