Taylor Bell: November 2007 Archives

I've covered high school basketball in Illinois since the 1950s and I'm constantly asked which is the best team I've ever seen. For the last 35 years, the answer has always been the same.

Thornridge 1972. Quinn Buckner, Boyd Batts, Mike Bonczyk, Ernie Dunn, Greg Rose.

If you saw them, you know what I mean. If you didn't, you can't make a valid comparison.

It would be like saying the 1961 Yankees (Mantle, Maris) was the best major league baseball team you ever saw without seeing the 1927 Yankees (Ruth, Gehrig).

There is nothing like it this side of the state basketball tournament...24 hours of high school football, two days, eight championship games, sitting on the 50-yard-line in front of the television set, enjoying hot turkey sandwiches, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie.

1A: Kudoes to Tuscola coach Stan Wienke for choosing values over ego, then suspending eight players, including some starters, for disciplinary reasons before Friday's state championship game against Galena.

Wienke's son, Michigan-bound quarterback John, may have been the best college prospect (size, great arm) on the field but Galena quarterback/defensive back/kick returner Gavin Kaiser was the MVP.

A reader e-mailed to complain about what he contrused as politics in the selection of the Sun-Times All-Chicago Area football team.

"It is obvious that the best players are not recognized for their hard work and statistics," he said.

"Jonathan Ridgner of Morgan Park, in my opinion, should have been on this prestigious list of players. You cannot let players down. You know how important it is for students to be recognized for their hard work.

"The numbers speak for themselves: 62 tackles, 18 assists, 6 sacks. Please don't discourage this young student. He must be recognized."

Every once in a while, I read something or see something or become aware of something or somebody e-mails or calls to criticize something I have written and, because I feel the complaint is unfair or unjustified or just plain dead wrong, I just have to respond with a rant. You know the feeling, right?

Well, it happened this morning. I watched the Lloyd Carr press conference live on Monday morning on ESPN and I was anxious to see how the media would report it.

I have been a card-carrying member of the media for more than 40 years but in recent years I have become a critic because I feel, in many cases, newspapers and television and radio try to create the news from a subjective standpoint rather than report it objectively.

It didn't figure. East St. Louis, the program with the great tradition that dates to Wirt Downing, Fred Cameron and Bob Shannon, was bigger, faster, stronger and more athletic than Wheaton Warrenville South. So how in the name of Red Grange's galloping ghost did the Tigers derail the Flyers 26-0 last Saturday in a Class 7A semifinal game in Wheaton?

Because WW South knows how to win under any circumstances. That's why coach Ron Muhitch's team has won 27 games in a row. That's why the Tigers will be favored to win their second state title in a row and sixth since 1992 when they meet Lake Zurich Saturday night in Champaign.

When I saw Simeon's Derrick Rose play in the Class AA finals as a junior, my first reaction was he was being overhyped by the media and Public League publicity hounds who always believe the best players and teams are produced in the city.

My argument? If you are one of the top five players in the country, as Rose was being projected to be, how can you score only nine points in the state championship game, in the most important game of your life, against a team you are supposed to dominate? Isn't this the time when a truly great player steps up and takes charge?

I suppose there were some raised eyebrows on Friday morning when high school football fans picked up their copy of the Sun-Times and were informed that Jordan Tassio of Naperville North had been selected as the Player of the Year in the Chicago area.

Not Steve Filer of Mount Carmel or Tommie Thomas of Richards or David Schwabe of Driscoll.

That was the short list. After 12 weeks, they had emerged as the finalists. Filer, the Lawless Award winner as the best player in the Catholic League. Thomas, who passed and ran for more than 2,000 yards. And Schwabe, who passed and ran for more than 2,000 yards--and was in position to set a state record for interceptions in a career.

No, I didn't overlook St. Laurence on my list of the top 10 teams I have seen in more than 40 years of watching high school football.

Under coach Tom Kavanagh and later under Mike O'Neill, St. Laurence fielded some of the finest teams and produced some of the finest players in the Chicago area in the 1970s...Tim Grunhard, Jeff Pearson, Paul Glonek, Kevin King, Pete Allard, Jim Kozlowski, Rob Mikel, Steve Mally, Jerry Skizas, Jerry Barnicle, Dan Gregus, Ron Prusa, Mike McQuinn, Pete Grogan, Dave Michalczewski.

However, the Vikings won only one state championship--in 1976, an overtime victory over Glenbard West. In my view, the 1976 team didn't match up to some of the school's best teams.

We've been talking about the best teams in the history of the state football playoff and several readers have asked me to recall the best teams I've seen since I began observing and covering the high school game in the 1950s.

I have to admit that some of the best teams I've ever seen played in the pre-playoff era, prior to 1974. I've often wondered how they would have fared if they had to play 14 games in a season instead of nine. And how much better the caliber of competition might have been.

When pressed on the matter, I've always said that the two best teams I've seen were St. Rita and Evanston, which finished 1-2 in the Chicago Daily News poll in 1971.

I've seen what arguably can be called the three best quarterbacks in the Chicago area this season--Peter Badovinac of Loyola, Jon Budmayr of Marian Central and Charlie Goro of Maine South.

Budmayr is the best pure passer of them all.

At 6-1, he is a couple of inches shorter that the other two. And college coaches might cringe at his size and lack of foot speed.

But look at the film.