OT: Can College Basketball be Relevant in Chicago?

[slu06]

Maybe the best read I've from the Tribune in a while. Saw many parallels with issues debated on this board.

I thought it might be of interest here since: (1) DePaul made it into the BigEast and we didn't (and they are horrible); (2) Moser took over Loyola; and (3) not landing Tatum/other local talent; (4) past success not affecting current recruiting; (5) Chicago State has often been a guaranteed win for us; etc. etc.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/college/ct-chicago-college-basketball-spt-1113-20151112-story.html

[billikenfan05]

Thanks for linking to an article we can't access.

[thetorch]

Cut and paste please. I'm not signing up for anything from that pinko commie rag.

[slu06]

FYI, I thought everyone knew, all you have to do is google search the title of a "sign up article" and you can read it for free...

Title =

After years of irrelevance, can college basketball in Chicago be revived?

[JMM28]

One day last month, Chicago State basketball coach Tracy Dildy was sitting in his basement office, reminiscing about the sweet long ago of Chicago college basketball with two of the biggest stars of that era.

They were talking about the late 1970s and early 1980s, when DePaul basketball was by far the biggest sports story in the city, Loyola was beginning a string of successful seasons, Illinois-Chicago was making a solid start as a Division I team and Chicago State was putting together such a strong NAIA record, it soon would move to the top NCAA division as well.

The two former players in the office, Mark Aguirre (Westinghouse/DePaul) and Darius Clemons (Phillips/Loyola), were Chicago Public League products who had allowed their schools to stand tall in a winter sports landscape when the Bulls and Blackhawks were lost in the snowdrifts.

"Back then, the kids coming out of high school had pride about wanting to represent their city," Dildy said. "Mark's sophomore year, DePaul had an entire great team from Chicago. Because of Darius, Chicago guys like Carl Golston, Greg Williams, Tim Bankston and Alfredrick Hughes went to Loyola."

The discussion soon turned from the happy past to the bleak present and the long, seemingly futile struggle to recapture the glory days of men's college basketball in Chicago.

This is a city that loves basketball and whose high schools produce one college star after another — for places like Duke, Kentucky, Kansas and Memphis.

Yet it has been more than a decade — and most of the last 25 seasons — since one of the four men's Division I programs at schools with campuses in the city has had a team that compelled the attention of Chicago sports fans.

The record is stark:

• Since 1991, the four teams have made a combined four NCAA tournament appearances, two by DePaul and two by UIC, most recently in 2004 for each.

• Chicago State has had one winning season in those 24, Loyola just five. UIC has six straight losing conference seasons, DePaul and Loyola eight straight.

• Average home attendance at the schools last season numbered 411 (Chicago State), 1,745 (Loyola), 2,913 (UIC) and 6,238 (DePaul). The arenas they play in have capacities ranging from 4,963 to 18,500.

"Success and non-success is cyclical," said Dave Leitao, beginning his second go-round as DePaul's coach this season. "But if all four are in a down cycle at the same time, you scratch your head and wonder why."

Leaving home

The head-scratching extends across the city's northern border to Northwestern, which never has made the NCAA tournament, even if the Wildcats essentially are sui generis: a school with formidable academic standards in a Power Five conference and the only Division I school in the area with a football team. At the other four, basketball is the sport.

"We want to be relevant in college basketball," said fifth-year Loyola coach Porter Moser, an honest admission that his team, like the other three in Chicago, remains largely irrelevant in the city and beyond.

That each school plays in a different conference makes their all being down so long together even more perplexing. There are few evident answers, save this one: Chicago-area high school players such as Aguirre and Clemons, those who might be "one-and-dones" in this era (one year of college, then the NBA draft), no longer think of staying home for college.

"That's on us as coaches," Dildy said. "It should be easier to convince a guy who isn't going to stay more than six months in college to stay home."

According to basketball-reference.com, Illinois high schools have produced more NBA and ABA players (253) than any state but California (417) and New York (326). Of the Illinois players, 113 went to Chicago high schools and nearly 50 more to Chicago-area schools.

"At the end of the day, for our colleges to get national prominence, we need to keep our best players," Young coach Tyrone Slaughter said. "Until we get the first one, that is going to be a challenge."

It has become more difficult in the one-and-done era, which began in 2006 by allowing U.S. players to declare for the NBA draft only if they were 19 during the calendar year of the draft and one year out of high school. Before that, players could go to the NBA directly from high school, with no college or foreign way station.

One-and-done prospects have gravitated toward colleges with marquee programs.

The last Chicago-area players with lengthy NBA careers who also played college basketball in the city were Quentin Richardson (Young), Bobby Simmons (Simeon) and Steven Hunter (Proviso East), who were at DePaul from 1998 through 2001 — not all for that entire period, but each for at least two seasons. In those three seasons, the Blue Demons had an NCAA tournament and an NIT appearance.

"All I know is when I was growing up, I was going to the school that had the most interest in me, and that was Cal (then-Memphis coach John Calipari, now at Kentucky)," said the Bulls' Derrick Rose (Simeon, Class of 2007).

Rose would play a season for Calipari at Memphis. Other recent one-and-dones Jahlil Okafor (Young) and Jabari Parker (Simeon) went to Duke, Anthony Davis (Perspectives Charter) to Kentucky, Cliff Alexander (Curie) to Kansas.

"Any one of those guys could change a loser into a winner," said Aguirre, a national player of the year at DePaul and No. 1 pick in the NBA draft who averaged 20 points over 13 NBA seasons, made three All-Star teams and won two NBA titles.

And the fan appeal of having a Chicago high school star become a standout at a local college, even for just one season, cannot be underestimated.

"It's a tough sell when you're going up against Duke or North Carolina or Kentucky," Simeon coach Robert Smith said. "But if you get one or two guys to buy in, others will do it."

Talk of the town

That is how it was with Aguirre. As a freshman, he helped DePaul get to the Final Four in 1978 and made coach Ray Meyer into America's grandfather.

As a sophomore, he had a Chicago Public League all-star team playing with him for the Blue Demons, a group that included Terry Cummings (Carver), who would be the No. 2 pick in the NBA draft and a two-time All-Star in 18 seasons.

"Ray Meyer was the best thing that ever happened to Chicago college sports," said Dildy, who went to King, played at UIC and spent 1997 to 2002 on the DePaul coaching staff.

To any current Chicago high school player, even Aguirre's name may not be well-known. And the idea of DePaul being bigger than the Bulls or Blackhawks may seem unbelievable.

You had to be there.

"By the time the Sun-Times made me DePaul's beat writer for 1980-81, it was the most talked-about team in town, maybe the most talked-about in the whole USA," said Mike Downey, later a Tribune columnist. "You heard a lot more people talking about the DePaul Blue Demons than the Duke Blue Devils."

The story was so compelling: the school under the L tracks, with the lovable teddy bear of a coach who had coached game-changing center George Mikan at DePaul in the 1940s — what seemed like the peach-basket era.

"The city couldn't get enough of the Blue Demons ... and pretty soon the national press picked up on it," said John Schulian, then a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.

"(Michael) Jordan would change all that — Jordan and the '85 Bears and the Ozzie GuillenWhite Sox and now the Blackhawks. DePaul got there before all of them."

But, save the two-decade continuation of the Meyer lineage under Ray's son, Joey, the Blue Demons have had no consistent head-turning success since 1992, and the same fate has befallen their Chicago brethren.

The prolonged down cycle has led the four schools to make six coaching changes in the last six years, with DePaul and UIC switching coaches twice.

Dildy, beginning his sixth year playing Sisyphus at Chicago State, is the dean of the local Division I coaches and the one whose team has won a conference tournament. Loyola's Moser seems to have his program closest to sustained success after winning 24 games last season.

"Are we over the hump? Not my personal hump," Moser said. "I think we're over the hump of people not looking our direction in recruiting."

His current team includes two top players (if not one-and-done level) from Chicago: junior Milton Doyle of Marshall, who transferred home from Kansas before his freshman season, and sophomore Donte Ingram of Simeon.

"The legacy of Kansas basketball is so great, it's a no-brainer for any high school player to want an environment like that," Doyle said, explaining his original choice.

"But I got a little homesick. Transferring to Loyola, the thing we talked about was my coming here and changing a program, kind of putting it on my back, wanting to be a part of building a legacy."

Or, as Moser put it: "It's not about making a statement on signing day, it's about making a statement on game days. I don't know how much of a splash Milton would have made at Kansas, but he has made a big splash here at Loyola."

Selling the abstract

In the end, of course, it is all about recruiting. In the days before ESPN became a player in college basketball beginning in 1979 and taking off in the mid-1980s, DePaul had an enormous advantage in the city and beyond because nearly all of its games were telecast on WGN, which aired in many major markets.

That exposure to the Aguirre-Cummings teams helped lure Tyrone Corbin from Columbia, S.C., and Rod Strickland from New York, both of whom went on to long NBA careers after playing in several NCAA tournaments for DePaul in the 1980s.

"ESPN became everybody's WGN," Joey Meyer said. "That neutralized our advantage."

Loyola has the distinction of being the only Illinois school to win an NCAA Division I title, but that was 52 years ago. The title is something to celebrate with pride, but it has little impact on current high school players, who weren't even born when Jordan finished turning Chicago into the center of the basketball universe by winning his last of six NBA titles with the Bulls in 1998.

Now the main things top recruits look at are NCAA tournament appearances, won-lost records and, for better or worse, the performance of one-and-done players — even if such draft prospects are illusory for nearly all high school players, no matter what fast-talking agents, coaches and hangers-on may say.

"Somebody is going to dare to stay home, but they need a specific reason other than just staying home," said Leitao, coach of the Blue Demons' last NCAA tournament team. "DePaul not being successful (recently) gives them a reason not to."

Beginning with the year before Aguirre's arrival, DePaul, then an independent, made the NCAA tournament 13 times in 15 seasons. Clemons, Loyola's all-time assists leader, followed three years later by Robeson's Hughes, a first-round NBA draft pick, sparked a turnaround under coach Gene Sullivan that got the Ramblers to the Sweet 16 in 1985 — their last NCAA tournament appearance.

"It's a Catch-22," Leitao said. "You've got to show success to gain the kind of recruits you need to sustain success, and you need those recruits to show success.

"You are trying to sell the abstract, something for tomorrow, to 17- and 18-year olds who rely on the tangible, the here and now. That's the challenge, and it's not unique to me."

To Aguirre, it is not about getting the five-star recruit to build around but starting with less highly touted players who can attract the five-star, the way Ray Meyer had done with Dave Corzine and Gary Garland and Joe Ponsetto in the two seasons before Aguirre arrived.

"I'd love to stand in front of all my backers and say we're in the mix for an Okafor, but that's not the reality," Moser said.

Both Moser and first-year UIC coach Steve McClain said many local high school coaches told them Loyola and UIC had not been visible enough on the recruiting trail for less-hyped players, especially in visiting high schools that might not have a potential recruit at the moment.

That's why McClain and his assistants visited 42 area high schools in the four days after he was named coach on March 25.

In early May, McClain signed Dominique Matthews of St. Rita, whom ESPN.com had called the No. 1 shooting guard in Illinois in 2014. He spent a year at a prep school and seemed on his way to Ole Miss before choosing UIC.

"Coach McClain came in and sold Dominique on staying home and jump-starting the program," St. Rita coach Gary DeCesare said.

Moser has brought area coaches to Loyola to show them a largely undiscovered campus that Cosmopolitan recently ranked seventh on a list of the 18 most beautiful college campuses in America. It is a lakefront campus that Benet grad Moser said he had no idea existed when he played in the Loyola Park summer league or coached Illinois State teams at Loyola.

"We wanted to be an option for these kids to stay home," Moser said. "Kids in the area were automatically looking outside the city. They had it in their mind, 'They haven't won in so long.'

"Breaking perceptions is harder than people think. We feel we have made a crack in the perception of what Loyola basketball can be in the city."

McClain believes all of the Chicago Division I schools will benefit if they all have success by "helping the perception of basketball in Chicago at all levels."

"Is it possible for all of us to be good at the same time? Probably not," McClain said. "There is no question we can build these programs back to where — I'm not saying great — but very respectable, at the top part of our leagues, with the chance to win conference championships and go to the NCAA tournament."

A successful DePaul team would find the road to the tournament easier than the others. Its conference, the Big East, had six NCAA entries last year. The Missouri Valley (Loyola) and Western Athletic (Chicago State) had two each, the Horizon League (UIC) just one.

DePaul is counting on a new arena at McCormick Place to be a game-changer after it opens for the 2017-18 season.

"With DePaul building the new gym at McCormick, that may change some guys' minds about going there," Rose said. "It's huge for the city."

The city's Division I coaches think an early season tournament there involving all four schools would be good for everyone.

"To stay in Chicago and build a program in Chicago is a huge thing," said Aguirre, 55, a customer relations executive for AAR, an aviation services company headquartered in Wood Dale. "Every (high school) kid that had a big name and stayed has done that.

"This is a great basketball town. Who wouldn't want to play in Chicago?"

[Taj79]

I see a lot of similarities between this article and us. I also see a lot of this article in places like New York City and Philly and LA. The best times we had,outside the Majerus era, were when Gray-Douglas-Bonner and Claggett-Highmark stayed home and were augmented by Hudson with Roder coming home from KState and JUCO studs Dobbs and Robinson reinforced by transfer Waldman. But the essence was indeed St. Louisans staying home. Majerus was different; Majerus had a system and found kids to fit it. And not all stay-at-homes work; see the Big Chill, Anthony Jones, Ted Mimlitz, Jon Severe, Tom Kleinschmidt, Johnny Parker, Shabazz Muhammed and others.

Right now, Gillmann and Hines are the only St.Louisans on the roster joined next year by Moore. All the big kids take their ball elsewhere to play. Leitao is correct when he talks about being able to sell the concept of the abstract to 17-year-olds. That takes a very special coach to a very special kid(s) who gets it and wants it. I thought maybe we had a kid like that this year but nope.

So to me, the whole foundation rests on the coaching staff. Therefore, confidence right now is not high with me on that regard. Boy, Chicagoland college basketball really sucks.