Heart, Determination and Teamwork Gave Palatine Super Power 40-Plus Years Ago
Molitor’s Teams in 1981 and 1982 Came Agonizingly Close to Back-To-Back Trips to Champaign
Palatine started the 1980s with two super boys basketball teams that weren’t driven by superstar power.
Those two Ed Molitor-led clubs in 1981 and ‘82 didn’t even win Mid-Suburban League division titles. Both of them did have a super type of power that put them less than a handful of points away from going to Champaign for what at that time was the Class AA Elite Eight.
Bob Williams was Molitor’s assistant on those teams and for 11 years before taking over the Schaumburg program and leading it to a AA state title in 2001 and fourth-place finish in 1999.
“The most incredible thing about Ed is he’s got the ability to inspire people to do more than they’re capable of,” Williams said for a 2008 Daily Herald story just before Molitor’s retirement.
That was especially true of the program’s first two supersectional teams that have now been joined by the 2024 group playing Warren on Monday night at the Northern Illinois University Convocation Center in DeKalb.
Building Toward Something Super
When Ed Molitor arrived at Palatine after seven successful seasons at Marist he inherited a program mired in a 13-year streak of losing seasons. Besides a pair of regional titles in 1973 and 1975 there had been little excitement for boys basketball since the 1962-63 teams led by future pro Ron Kozlicki went 43-8 and won two North Suburban Conference and regional crowns.
Molitor’s first team with future NBA player Kevin McKenna and recovered from a 3-11 start to win a regional but still finished 13-14. The next year was a step back to 6-19, but the 1978-79 team finally broke the long streak of losing at 20-7 with a regional title and another winning season followed at 16-11. There were big reasons for optimism for the 1980-81 season as Molitor had his biggest front line at Palatine in 6-foot-7 John Kelley, 6-4 Jeff Foster and 6-3 Joe Cole.
“If we can get consistency from it, come up with two guards to handle the ball and play the kind of defense I like, we’ll be a contender,” Molitor told the Herald’s Keith Reinhard in the preseason.
One of the early highlights was at the Luther North Christmas Tournament where the Pirates beat defending Class A champion Luther South. Kelley, who played four years at Xavier, had two dunks and outscored 6-8 star Pierre Cooper 21-9. Cooper was projected to be part of Bradley coach Dick Versace’s Chicago to Peoria pipeline of stars, which included Hersey Hawkins, Mitchell “JJ” Anderson and Voise Winters, but never played a collegiate game because of a blood disorder.
But it was an up-and-down ride to a 14-8 record late in the regular season. The Pirates hosted the AA regional and won the opener over Fremd 53-40 as Kelley scored 25. That set up another matchup with Barrington after they split their MSL North meetings. Palatine came out in a full-court press that forced 9 first-quarter turnovers and it took a 10-point lead en route to a 54-48 victory that ended Barrington’s streak of consecutive regional titles at four.
“I think we caught them a little bit by surprise and it perked our kids up offensively,” Molitor said.
So it was across town to Fremd for the sectional and Kelley had 18 points and 7 rebounds as Palatine controlled the pace and Elgin 54-49. That put the 20-8 Pirates in a sectional championship game for the first time and had Molitor believing they could play with anyone.
That belief would be tested by a Crown team led by star Gary Gliesmann that was on a 26-game winning streak after losing its season opener. But Palatine overcame an early 8-point deficit for a 49-46 victory on Joe Schager’s tiebreaking layup with 1:03 to play. Cole’s free throw at 0:04 sealed it in the era before the 3-point shot.
Schager had lost his starting job at midseason and was averaging 2.6 points a game.
“I’ve made tougher shots than that, but never one that important,” Schager told the Herald’s Terry Bannon, who was best known as the paper’s Bears’ beat writer. “I saw the baseline open up when he (Leroy Leske) bellied up to me. I just went for the basket.
“I don’t think they were thinking about me too much because I haven’t been scoring much. When it went in I was thinking about staying on my feet and getting back on defense.”
Said Molitor: “I put him in because he’s a good defensive player and because he’s aggressive. He may not be the most talented player but he has a heart the size of the gym.”
Kelley had missed 9½ minutes with foul trouble but his 22 points and 7 rebounds included the tying tip-in with 1:45 to play. Cole missed a free throw at 0:15 but when Leske was fouled 10 seconds later, he missed the first free throw and on orders from coach Jim Hinkle intentionally missed the second with Cole grabbing the rebound and getting fouled.
Cole made the first free throw and Molitor called time with a 3-point lead.
Bannon wrote: “(Cole) reacted to his own success with a jump for joy that would make a kangaroo jealous. Cole hopped over to the sidelines for a Palatine timeout. Molitor then instructed the Pirates that this was no time to do anything stupid. “They listened,” he said.
So that set up a matchup of first-time Sweet 16 qualifiers with Palatine and Antioch at NIU’s Chick Evans Field House in DeKalb. Antioch came in at 22-5 and on a 17-game winning streak with the big duo of future Big Ten players in 6-8 John Ploss (Wisconsin) averaging 16 points a game and 6-6 Dee Maras (Illinois) averaging 18. The preview of the game included a piece by legendary Herald columnist Mike Imrem on Kelley’s move from Syracuse early in the fall of his junior year and the adjustment from a wide-open game to a more deliberate style of play.
That showed up on the scoreboard in a controversial finish where Antioch escaped 35-34 when Tim Koesser was fouled and made the second of 2 free throws with two seconds to play before 4,900. Molitor told Bannon the officiating “didn’t cost us the game” and said it was the Pirates’ inability to stretch a 29-24 lead with the ball into a three-possession game.
Ploss and Maras ignited an 8-0 run to put Antioch up 32-29 with 1:10 left but Kelley answered with a tying 3–point play over Ploss. Maras had a steal and layup at 0:30 but Kelley tied it again with 2 free throws with nine seconds to go.
More than 200 fans greeted the team when it returned from DeKalb. Molitor took the Palatine players to the state tourney, where they watched unbeaten and top-ranked Quincy, one of the best teams in state history, take a 24-2 lead on Antioch en route to a 75-50 quarterfinal win and an overwhelming state championship.
Molitor talked with Bannon the day after the super. The Pirates were losing four starters and their top two reserves off a 21-9 team but Molitor was optimistic as he credited a departing senior group that had won only 1 game as freshmen and 1 game as sophomores.
“I’ve been coaching 15 years and I’ve seen a lot of teams come back after a successful season and have another one,” Molitor said. “I think we can do the same thing.”
Bannon wrote: “If Palatine’s youngsters improve as much as this year’s seniors did, the Pirates’ future will be even better than the recent past.”
Better with another touch of bitterness.
A Super Return
Entering the 1981-82 season, there wasn’t a lot of reason for outside optimism about Palatine as it had a lot of questions and there was no shortage of teams in the MSL and its own division with a lot of answers.
Arlington was stacked with 6-6 junior Chris Berg emerging as one of the state’s best players along with Larry Tellschow, Ted Wolfe, Rick Elkins and Don Frankel for George Zigman’s best team. Barrington’s Tom Moony had another solid team led by Jeff Condill and defending league champion Buffalo Grove was always a threat under Paul Grady.
Brett Muffie had Prospect poised to begin a nice run of success under Ron Ashley and defending South champion Forest View figured to be formidable again under Glen Elms. And Elk Grove coach Ken Grams had one of the best athletes in MSL history back from a 19-9 regional champion in 6-7 future big-league pitcher Dave Otto.
But Palatine had something few could have seen in a story Molitor shared just before he retired about Tom Carlucci, who played on both supersectional teams.
“Tom Carlucci told Eddie (Molitor’s son), ‘Back then we believed in what your dad was teaching and believed that was going to make us successful,” Molitor said.
Seeing it would be another story as the top three returnees, Rick Brandt, 6-6 Todd Peterson and John Mosack, accounted for 8 points a game combined a year earlier. Carlucci, Jim Martin, Tom Cole, Ed Cheatham and 6-9 Mike Grensing, who was coming off off-season knee surgery, would also compete for time.
The Pirates started 3-3 but started to put it together and had won 7 of 8 when Molitor talked with the Herald’s Keith Reinhard in mid-January. They epitomized Aristotle’s “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” with Peterson, Carlucci, Brandt, Cole and Mosack all averaging between 7-10 points a game.
And Molitor was ecstatic.
“We might not even have an all-conference selection on this club but it’s still the type of team I prefer to coach,” Molitor said. “Instead of one outstanding player we have a bunch of good kids, any four or five are capable of hitting around the double-figure mark every time out.
“Maybe we don’t have a player hitting 25 points a game but I’d rather see it spread out. If you lean too much on that one big scorer and he comes to a game sick or gets injured you could be in trouble.”
Palatine took a third-place finish in the MSL North behind Arlington and Barrington into the Fremd regional and opened with a 66-42 win over a young Hoffman Estates team coached by Rick Gablenz whose best days were a few years ahead. Nothing would be easy for the Pirates the rest of the postseason.
First was a matchup with its crosstown rival Fremd on its home floor. Mo Tharp was trying to win the program’s first regional title and his team had leads of 26-20 in the third quarter and 34-30 with five minutes to play. But Palatine pitched a shutout the rest of the way and won 36-34 on Mosack’s 19-footer with five seconds to play.
“We’ve been in this kind of situation many times and the kids feel comfortable with it,” Molitor told the Herald’s Bruce Miles, who would be best known for his Cubs and baseball coverage. “When the game is on the line their heads are in the game. I felt all along we could win the ballgame if we got the last shot. And Mosack is an extremely good shooter.”
That same night Arlington edged Barrington 39-37 on Berg’s buzzer-beating tip-in. Prospect and Forest View won regional titles as did Elk Grove, which was Palatine’s next opponent in the Elgin sectional semifinals. The Grenadiers won their MSL crossover in mid-February 67-51 as Tim Olrick scored 24 and Otto had 21, but Grams called the final misleading because it was a 2- to 3-point game with three minutes left.
Once again it was Mosack with the dramatic finish as he capped a career-high 17-point night with a 15-footer from the corner with one second left in overtime for a 37-35 victory. Neither team had scored since 1:23 left in regulation and Palatine held Otto to 14 of his 24-point average.
For the sectional final, Molitor’s concern about St. Charles’ quickness was such that he abandoned his traditional man-to-man defense for a 2-3 zone. But an 18-15 halftime deficit led Molitor to scrap the junk defense and Palatine used a 30-15 fourth-quarter to repeat as sectional champs with a 56-43 victory.
“We decided at halftime we could play with them,” Peterson told Miles. “They weren’t as quick as we thought they were. They didn’t score much off our zone and when we took them on man-to-man we had the upper hand.”
Molitor said “we were getting beat by playing our second-best defense and I couldn’t see any sense to that.” Brandt led the way with 16 points and Palatine used a 10-0 run for a 38-32 lead with 3:36 to play. St. Charles got within 2 points at 2:30 but the Pirates put it away at the free-throw line and finished the final quarter 20-for-24.
“(Brandt) is a winner. Our kids are winners,” Molitor told the Herald’s Dave Jacobson after they improved to 22-7. “If somebody would have told me in December when we were 3-3 that we’d be sectional champs … but here we are. This is a great tribute to our kids. A lot of people wrote us off after last year.”
Many would do it again as Molitor’s team-first approach would be put to the ultimate test in the East Aurora supersectional against second-ranked St. Joseph and old East Suburban Catholic Conference coaching pal Gene Pingatore. St. Joe’s came in at 28-1 and had two of the country’s premier big men in 6-7 Daryl Thomas and 6-6 Tony Reeder.
Thomas would star for Indiana coach Bobby Knight’s 1987 NCAA champions and Reeder would play four years at Marquette. They also figured to be hungry as a year earlier they were ranked fourth but had their state tourney dreams crushed in an overtime upset in the York sectional semifinalsl by a young and talented but sub-.500 Weber team coached by Jim Harrington.
Molitor told Reinhard for the preview that one of the keys was not getting star-struck against a program that had just produced NBA legend Isiah Thomas a few years earlier.
“With the type of kids they have, it’s not hard to be awed by their abilities and be very intimidated,” Molitor said. “Sometimes it can take an opponent a whole quarter to realize they are capable of playing against St. Joe … and then it’s too late.”
Pingatore was ready for anything and said “Eddie is a very well-disciplined, intelligent coach. I wouldn’t be surprised at any strategy he comes up with but I expect him to play a very patient game.”
Once again the Pirates would be seconds from a trip to Champaign. But missed free throws and a defensive breakdown led to Dwayne King’s tying floor-length drive just before the regulation buzzer and the Chargers would escape 52-50 in overtime.
The Pirates also gained tremendous admiration from their opponents.
“Eddie Molitor deserved to win tonight. You can’t take anything away from the way his kids played,” Pingatore told Reinhard.
“We came in with a bad attitude but they played well,” Thomas told Jacobson. “They came at us and really worked hard. They really surprised us. We weren’t expecting it. I just thank God we won.”
Palatine used a 10-0 run to take a 32-28 lead after halftime and went up 35-30 after three. St. Joe countered with a 7-0 run but Palatine responded by hitting 5 free throws to go up 40-37.
Unfortunately for the Pirates in the final 1:19 they missed 5 of 8 free throws and the front end of two 1-and-1s. Carlucci’s 3-point play gave them their last lead at 46-45 in overtime.
“These kids just never gave up tonight,” Molitor told Reinhard.
“They might be better physically but we had more heart and played harder than they did,” Peterson told Jacobson. “I’m proud of the way we played. We were never intimidated.
“I think they thought the suburban team would roll over and play dead. But we work harder than any team in the state and it paid off at the end of his season.”
Mosack had a game-high 15 points with Brandt adding 12 and Carlucci 11. Peterson had a game-high 8 rebounds against the D-I duo of Thomas and Reeder, who had 13 and 10 points respectively. And Brandt told Jacobson the Pirates proved a point by not getting blown out as many expected.
“We have more heart than they do,” Brandt said. “They have the size and names and all-staters but we have a bunch of guys with a lot of heart. All the guys on the bench, the coaches, everybody has it. That’s how we made it this far.”
Cheatham credited Molitor’s demanding style for putting him on a path to success as a football player at Drake and professionally. He also recalled in 2008 how Molitor put the devastating loss in perspective afterward.
“We got in the locker room and we were beside ourselves,” Cheatham said. “He looked at all of us and said, ‘If this is the worst thing that ever happens to you guys, you’re in for a pretty good life.’
“The majority of people involved in that program, at least the people I’ve known, basically bought into the system and at the end of your senior year if you were still around that said a lot.”
St. Joseph would go to Champaign and get steamrolled by unranked Chicago Public League champion Marshall 79-59 in the quarterfinals. Arlington joined the ‘74 Hersey team as only the second MSL team to make the Elite Eight and lost its quarterfinal 60-46 to eventual champion East St. Louis Lincoln.
Palatine and Molitor wouldn’t return to the sectional until the 1993 team that won its first MSL crown led by standout guard Marc Boone. But the hopes of getting to Champaign ended in a double-overtime sectional semifinal loss to a Fremd team that would make a memorable run to finish fourth and become the MSL’s first boys basketball state trophy-winner.
Now Eric Millstone, who was an assistant to Molitor before taking over as head coach when he retired, will try to lead Palatine to the super breakthrough that a bunch of overachieving believers made so close to happening twice 40-plus years ago.
More great stuff, Marty! John Mosack went on to serve as an assistant to Mo Tharp at Fremd. That '93 Sectional semi double-OT game at Fremd was an incredible crosstown battle. Jeff Hecklinski, who was also the QB on the football team, was another star on that club.
Looking forward to tonight at NIU. A great run for Eric Millstone, his staff and those kids!