Taylor Bell: January 2009 Archives

Life is filled with ironies. Last week, I talked to legendary basketball star Cazzie Russell about a story I was doing on his alma mater, Carver High School, the subject of the Sun-Times' School of the Week series on Feb. 4. And I wrote a column on his former coach, Larry Hawkins, for the current issue of Scott Powers' Ill. Hoops newsletter.

Now Hawkins is gone. He died on Jan. 30. He was 77. I knew he was ill. He looked very frail when I last saw him in December at the Institute for Athletics and Education's annual awards banquet at the University of Chicago. But Larry always a very private person. He never talked about himself.

As basketball coach at Carver from 1959 to 1977, he produced one state runnerup (1962) and one state champion (1963) and developed many outstanding players such as Russell, Darius "Pete" Cunningham, Joe Allen, Gerry Jones and Ken Maxey.

The decision by Wayne Blackshear, one of the nation's leading sophomore basketball players, to transfer from Curie to Morgan Park has been a source of conversation in the court of public debate in recent days. In my view, it shouldn't have been permitted.

There have been some notable transfers in the past...Fred Riddle from Madison to Collinsville, Bumpy Nixon from Quincy to Galesburg and Nick Anderson from Prosser to Simeon. Each stirred up considerable controversy at the time. But the moves, for one reason or another, were approved.

I remember the Anderson case very well. He was an All-Chicago Area player at Prosser as a freshman and sophomore. Then he chose to transfer to Simeon because he wanted to play with Ben Wilson. At the request of Prosser coach Gene Ideno, I went to the Anderson home on the West Side to meet with Nick and his family.

It's all about the street gangs and rowdy kids who have no loyalty to schools or communities. They are teenage terrorists who will do anything to disrupt law and order, education, the establishment and society in general.

But you should know that it didn't start this year or last year or the year before that. It has been going on for decades in Chicago. Sure, a few incidents erupted between players, even cheerleaders, but the overwhelming majority of cases occurred because hot-tempered fans and juvenile delinquents chose to create havoc.

Sun-Times prep editor Steve Tucker, a New Trier graduate, recalls attending the Marshall/New Trier supersectional game at Northwestern's McGaw Hall in 1966 where a melee disrupted the proceedings. He believes it was the beginning of the IHSA's move toward the two-class system and the Public League's automatic berth in the state finals.

Talk about spin. There are more than enough recruiting services and analysts to cover every high school basketball prospect from Anna to Zion. Name virtually any player and, depending on when they observed him, you can get a dozen different evaluations. So who's right? Are they better than predicting the weather or betting on the ponies?

Over the last 30 years, I've relied on the observations of Bob Gibbons and Van Coleman for a national point of view. Locally and statewide, the Schmidt brothers, Joe Henricksen and Bill Flanagan seem to have their fingers on the pulse of who's who in Illinois. But who's to say there isn't someone else who is better informed and more analytical?

I ran into another well-traveled scout the other day. Mike Mosley is a 1991 graduate of Peoria Manual, a self-described basketball junkie who coached at Bloomington Central Catholic for two years and now assists at Bloomington High School.

Here are some of his recent observations:

As the years go by, every once in a while, someone who wasn't there at the time it happened invariably asks: "What was the best high school basketball team of all time?" And someone who was born in the 1980s responds: "Derrick Rose and Simeon in 2007."

This is in defense of an argument that rarely has had to be made. Thornridge 1972 was the best team in state history. It's a slam dunk, a no-brainer. Coach Ron Ferguson's Falcons were the best there ever was. Here's why.

There have been many great teams, including Quincy 1981, Marshall 1958, Collinsville 1961, Taylorville 1944, La Grange 1953 and 1970, Evanston 1968, Thornton 1966, Proviso East 1991, Peoria Manual 1997 and Simeon 2007.

Blogging is such a new concept that the word isn’t even included in my old Webster’s Dictionary.

According to Wikipedia, the electronic dictionary, a blog is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events or other material such as graphics or video.

When I retired as a full-time high school sports reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times in 2001, I didn’t know what a blog was. Imagine my surprise when an editor called to ask me if I wanted to contribute a weekly blog to the Sun-Times Web site.

Maybe we ought to stop hyping these kids.

Maybe we ought to stop rating them.

Maybe they aren't as good as we thought they were.

Maybe they aren't mature enough to handle it all.

Maybe they ought to top reading and start playing.

Maybe the analysts who overanalyze and the anonymous Internet contributors who are eager to communicate their partisan opinions will back off and chill out.

Evaluating high school football and basketball players and trying to determine if they are good enough to play at Notre Dame or Northern Illinois or Wisconsin-Whitewater is like predicting tomorrow's weather or playing the ponies.

Take Cully Payne, for example.

The Alabama-bound point guard from Schaumburg once was a Jay Leno joke after committing to DePaul as an eighth grader living in Burlington. Nobody took him seriously until last month, when he put on a Derrick Rose impersonation at the Pontiac Holiday Tournament.

In what editor Joe Henricksen of City/Suburban Hoops Report accurately describes as "the wildest high school season I can remember, with no dominant teams and 15 to 18 teams that can contend for a state championship," here are some post-holiday observations from one and all:

Warren's Brandon Paul is the kind of athletic and multi-dimensional backcourt presence that Illinois coach Bruce Weber desperately needs. Waukegan's Jereme Richmond might be the best talent in the state but he doesn't play both ends of the floor as Paul does.

Schaumburg's Cully Payne has emerged as a genuine Player of the Year candidate, a Jimmy Chitwood AKA Bobby Plump, the hero of the movie "Hoosiers." No more jokes about him making a college commitment as an eighth grader.