The holiday basketball season is in full swing and several area teams have busy schedules.
Morris, Coal City and Seneca are involved in the Plano tournament. Gardner-South Wilmington is playing in the Marseilles affair, Dwight competes in the Prairie Central
cage tourney, Wilmington is at DeKalb and Reed-Custer plays at Monticello. In girls basketball competition, Coal City and Reed-Custer are entered in the Lisle tourney while Seneca is playing at St. Bede and the Dwight girls are at Momence.
In one of the best holiday basketball tournaments in the state is at Pontiac. This cage classic started in 1926. It has over the years contained a local flavor. In 1936, Braidwood won consolation honors, and then, the very next year, it won the big prize, beating highly-regarded Rockford. That win got a ton of attention for the Comets. Braidwood battled much larger
Dundee for the IHSA state championship game, finishing in second place.
Dwight won the Pontiac title in 1938 and the Morris Redskins beat DePue in 1953 for the championship. Peoria Manual has won the Pontiac championship 10 times, Simeon of Chicago
has captured the title eight times and finished in second place to Waukegan last year. Quincy is a five-time winner.
Over the years, several local teams have participated in the Kankakee tourney, which started in 1950 and was won by Chicago South Shore. In 1951, Little David school Hebron won top honors and then went on the win the IHSA state title, beating Quincy in overtime. That team was paced by the Judson twins, Paul and Phil, along with junior 6-foot-11 center Bill Schultz.
In 1952, Kankakee and Harv Schmidt won the event. The Kays were rated
No. 1 in the state all year long, losing in the regional tournament to La Grange, who eventually won the IHSA state title, beating Peoria Central for the big prize.
The ironic thing about Peoria Central was the fact that Morris beat them in the Pontiac tournament and the Redskins won the tourney, beating DePue for the Championship. Morris was rated all year long, but could not get past Ottawa in regional play. Gil Love took the Pirates to the state tourney, winning their first game, but losing to Danville Schlarman in round two. That was a time when all 16 teams played on the first day of the tourney.
On that Kankakee team that won the Holiday affair was a player who played at Morris until his family moved to Kankakee. Phil Werbiski was an up-and-coming star in his younger day at Morris. Werbiski broke the starting lineup in his junior season and helped the Kays to an undefeated season, until the loss to La Grange. The next year, Werbiski was named to the Kankakee All-Tournament team, and he later played at Loyola university in Chicago.
Other area players who made the Kankakee All-Tourney team were 1966 — Jim Struck, Morris; 1967 — Dan Darlington, Morris; 1968 — Keith Salem, Morris; 1972 — Tom Halloran, Dwight; 1982 — Scott Ferguson, Morris; 2000 — Mike Grimes, Reed-Custer, 2001 — Mike Shorkey, Reed-Custer; 2002 — Tournamnet MVP Trevor Huetteman, Reed-Custer; 2003 — Michael Cuddy and co-Tournament MVP Grant Kluge, Reed-Custer; 2005 — James Harding, Minooka and Steve Howard, Reed-Custer.
A few of the many standout players in the annual Kankakee tourney include:
• Paul and Phil Judson of Hebron — both played basketball at the University of Illinois.
• Harv Schmidt of Kankakee — played with the Illini in basketball.
• Randy Crews of Bradley-Bourbonnais — also played at Illinois in both baseball and basketball and later played several years in the Chicago Cubs organization.
• Ed O"Bradovich of Proviso — made his mark in football with Illinois and the Bears.
• Dave Kecourek of Morton — star football player at Wisconsin and later a great NFL
career with Detroit Lions.
• Scott Meents of Herscher — standout at Illinois and later played several years in the
NBA.
• Jim Thome of Peoria Limestone — three-sport standout in Peoria, later played
at Bradley University and, later still, a Major League All-Star for several teams, and is still playing.
• Antoine Walker and Donovan McNabb of Mt.Carmel — Walker was a great player for Kentucky and the Boston Celtics. McNabb went on to fame at Syracuse University in football and later into the NFL with Philadelphia and now Washington.
In future articles, I will take a look at the history of other tournaments, involving local teams and players.
Pro football picks
It is nip and tuck going into the final regular season games in the NFL and this article's NFL predictions competition. Professor Don Neushwander, Jr. took the leadership away from this writer several weeks ago, but faltered this week. Nuesh had a bad week with a 6-7 mark.
Nick "All Business" Vidito and I were both 8-5 for the week and moved into a three-way tie for first place with Neush. Tony "The Wonder Boy" Darin is only one behind after his 8-5 week. Tony picked New Orleans over Atlanta — the only one to do that. Guest predictor Bill Button Sr. was 7-6 for the week.
Neush, Nick and this writer are all 136-82 for the year. Tony is next at 135-83, and the guests come in at 128-87. All selected the Bears over the Jets except Nick, who went with New York.
The Bears close out the regular season Sunday at Green Bay. That will be a tough one to pick. If you remember the first game this season between the two rivals, the Bears won, but Green Bay had a ton of penalties.That probably won"t happen again.
Who will come on top of the panel of so-called experts? If it ends in a tie, we will go into the playoffs to break that deadlock.