With its Saturday night outclassing of O’Fallon, the Simeon Wolverines entered the rarified company of the nine programs in the ninety-eight year history of the IHSA that have won at least two straight state championships. When your company includes teams and players of the caliber of East St. Louis Lincoln (’87-’89) with LaPhonso Ellis, Cuonzo Martin, and Chris Rodgers, Proviso East (’91-’92) with Donny Boyce Sherrell Ford, and Michael Finley, the Wayne McClain coached Peoria Manual (’94-’97) with Marcus Griffin, Frank Williams, and son Sergio, and a Peoria (’03-’04) squad that featured Shaun Livingston the achievement becomes clearer. Even more striking, they became the first Chicago public league team to accomplish the feat.
Brain Drain No More
Simeon head man Robert Smith is yet another example of the Chicago Public League’s emergence from a longstanding reputation as a talent rich, but coaching poor basketball medium. There have been obvious past exceptions to the city’s coaching deficit with Smith’s predecessor Robert Hambric (IHSA state title ‘84), Westinghouse’s Chris Head (’02), Marshall legend Luther Bedford being among the most cogent examples, but they were outnumbered by a vast majority of basketball incompetents and/or shady opportunists (e.g. Landon Cox of King).
Fortunately, perhaps in no small part due to the efforts and interest of Chicago Public School’s CEO Arne Duncan (Harvard ‘87), a basketball Academic All-American and former foreign pro, the city has jettisoned the bad apples and is governing the system with more vigilance. The result, and great news for the state’s already spoiled basketball fans, is that the overall quality of the city’s coaching is on a reassuring upward graph. The spirited collision between city, suburban, and downstate programs is only going to become more competitive, further advancing the case of Illinois high school basketball as the nation’s finest and deepest.
Another big part of the resurgence is that the city is retaining coaches of Smith’s talent rather than watching them groom in the Public League only to leave and round into full maturity and success in the suburbs. Obviously, given the lure of suburban pay scales, it still takes a great deal of loyalty to affect this retention, but with more stories like Smith’s, a former Hambric player at Simeon, and the improved oversight of the system at large, it should continue.
More Than A Rose
Hoopraker witnessed a November, Derrick Rose-less version of Simeon and came away very impressed by the balance and share the load mentality of Smith’s team. Playing without their superstar and loadstone of the 2007 Calipari recruiting class, the Wolverines displayed a seemingly endless rotation of well taught basketball players who despite phenomenal one on one athletic capacity seemed more interested in a less flashy but more potent team approach. It helps when two of your support players are tandem UW-Milwaukee recruits Tim Flowers and Kevin Johnson, but without the kind of democratic guard and swing play that Smith has fostered, even talented frontcourt players like these can find themselves not getting the low block touches they need to contribute. Even in the playing into form days of November, Smith’s coaching philosophy of team over individual was fully operative and goes a long way to explaining Saturday’s result.
It bears mention that in the final game of his high school career while vying for a state championship, Derrick Rose scored only two points. Flowers (35 pts., 12 rbs.) and Johnson (20 pts.,7 rbs.) assumed the scoring mantle with Rose playing distributor (8 assists) and clean up man (7 rbs.). With the exception of his head-to-head battle with Matta recruit Evan Turner a few weeks ago that turned into an ego-fest, Rose has largely proven to be the rare blue-chipper who has eyes for more than his own reflected image: “I couldn’t have asked for a better way to go out. The second half I didn’t even want to score. I wanted every other senior to score, for every other senior to feel special because I did.”
The Last Good Game
The unfortunate footnote is that a superstar with the increasingly rare attitude embedded in his team play and the quote above is headed to a Calipari-led program that seems incongruous to the same. No one with any perspective can blame Bruce Weber for this fact as it is more than clear that Rose’s recruitment, like it is with many a blue chipper, was less about Derrick Rose than those surrounding and influencing him. Furthermore, he is destined to be no more than a six month resident in Elvis country. But, it would’ve been nice to see a kid with the seemingly refreshing humility and right-mindedness of Rose with a college basketball teacher and program that might challenge him to a greater degree, and in an NCAA climate where such mercenary use of the collegiate game wasn’t possible.
Sadly, Saturday’s state championship may be the last meaningful, pure basketball game of Rose’s life. It’s off to a program and coach that, like many out there, is little more than an empty finishing school for the NBA obsessed. Rose will be comforted by his riches, but it’s the games and attendant joys of the past four years that he and his teammates will spend the rest of their lives reliving and trying unsuccessfully to recreate.
