MSL Basketball: Katovich Joins Boys 300-Win Club
Rolling Meadows' Coach is Ninth to Reach Milestone in League History
Kevin Katovich became the ninth boys basketball coach to reach 300 career victories at a Mid-Suburban League school (or schools) Tuesday night as Rolling Meadows improved to 17-2 with a 66-27 win over Schaumburg.
And Katovich knows if his mentor, Glen Elms, was still alive he’d likely get a congratulatory call that would start with an acerbic, “What the heck took you so long!”
Here’s a look at the 300-game MSL win club, which includes Elms one spot ahead of Katovich. The win totals are from a combination of records by Keith Reinhard and myself at the Daily Herald and the IHSA.
NOTE: This has been updated after the 2022-23 season.
1. Tom McCormack (Conant) - 550
Tom McCormack was a perfect example of it’s not how you start but how you finish and patience as he inherited a massive reclamation project when he arrived from Immaculate Conception in 1985. Conant had won 11 games in the previous five years and went 2-48 in his first two years. But the program took off from there as “Mac” finished with 550 victories at the school when he retired after the 2016-17 season.
His 1993-94 Class AA Elite Eight finisher led by Rick Kaye and Corey Brown is arguably the most exciting team in MSL history. His teams won 13 regional, 5 sectional and 5 MSL titles and nearly sent the state championship trophies at Schaumburg (2001) and Glenbrook North (2005) elsewhere with sectional upset bids. McCormack also won 23 games (for 573 overall) in his only season as head coach at IC, co-wrote a book on building a basketball program, “Victory Is In The Details,” with longtime coaching friend Tom Anstett and is still on the bench as an assistant at IC Catholic Prep (far left in photo after ICCP won its holiday tournament).
2. Mo Tharp (Fremd) - 406
This year is the 30th anniversary of Fremd’s MSL breakthrough as the first state trophy-winner as Mo Tharp’s team finished fourth in Class AA behind three-sport star Keith Lozowski, Steve McGrath, Mike Mangan, Matt Panzino, Dan Laya, Chris Loughlin and Andre Anthony. Tharp had more talented teams, but this one broke through as Loughlin led a miraculous supersectional comeback against Naperville Central, Lozowski tipped in the winner at the quarterfinal buzzer against Bradley-Bourbonnais in Champaign and they just missed reaching the title game with a 2-point semifinal loss to Rockford Guilford.
Tharp won 10 regional, 5 sectional and 3 MSL crowns from 1975-2002 at Fremd. He also won 72 games at Zion-Benton, his alma mater, before coming to Fremd.
3. Ed Molitor (Palatine) - 397
Ed Molitor left Marist after seven successful years and a 26-win season to take over a Palatine program mired in a 13-year slump of losing seasons. His first Pirates’ team, led by future NBA player and college coach Kevin McKenna, nearly made the sectional finals and his third team won 20 games.
Sticky man-to-man defense, attention to fundamental details and offensive discipline and patience were hallmarks from 1976-2008. Molitor’s 1981 and 1982 teams came agonizingly close to getting to Champaign - falling to teams with multiple D-I players in supersectionals by 1 point to Antioch and 2 points in overtime to St. Joseph. He won 6 regional titles and one MSL crown at Palatine and 504 games overall in 39 years.
4. Bob Widlowski (Fremd) - 379
No MSL boys basketball program has had the stability like Fremd with only three coaches in 57 years in Leon Kasuboske, Mo Tharp and Bob Widlowski, who is starting his 22nd and final season before he retires. Widlowski (drawing up a play in the huddle below) played for Ed Molitor at Palatine and then assisted Tharp before taking over and continuing the tradition of success.
Not only is Widlowski the only MSL boys coach to have an unbeaten, uninterrupted regular season, he did it twice, in 2014 when the Riley Glassmann-led Vikings lost in the sectional final to Stevenson and Jalen Brunson and in 2017 when they won their first 30 games behind Kyle Sliwa and finished fourth in Class 4A. His teams have won 8 regional and 4 MSL titles.
5. George Zigman (Arlington and Hersey) - 352
George Zigman’s success was forged in the basketball hotbed of Taylorville, about 27 miles southeast of Springfield, as he played for the school’s 1950 state tournament team. He worked his way north through Delavan and Glenbard East to Arlington in 1968-69. He won 263 games with the Cardinals and gave the school a big finish before it closed in 1984. An Elite Eight Trip in 1982 - only the second in MSL history - behind Larry Tellschow, Ted Wolfe and Chris Berg, a supersectional trip in 1983 and three straight MSL North titles.
Zigman’s first Hersey team in 1985 made it to Champaign with dynamic point guard Brian Gregory and his final team in 1990 lost in the supersectional to Rolling Meadows and Mike Lipnisky. Zigman finished with 393 varsity victories (41 in two years at Delavan) and won 10 regionals at Arlington and Hersey. He passed away tragically from complications after heart surgery on August 17, 1991.
6. Bob Williams (Schaumburg) - 347
Bob Williams’ 2001 Schaumburg team pulled off arguably the MSL’s greatest moment when Mark Pancratz, Tony Young and Scott Zoellick led a deep, disciplined and talented team past top-ranked Thornwood and 7-1 Eddy Curry for the Class AA state title. It is still the league’s only boys basketball team to reach the championship game.
Two years earlier the Saxons came home with a fourth-place trophy and they also reached the Elite Eight again in 2006. Their only losing seasons in Williams’ tenure from 1991-2009 were his first two and they would take their tough man-to-man defense and anywhere against anybody in the state. Stints as a head coach at Niles West and Benedictine Military School in Georgia put Williams at nearly 500 career victories and he won 9 regional and 4 MSL titles at Schaumburg.
7. Bill Wandro (Hoffman Estates) - 337
Bill Wandro was a big part of the MSL’s Golden Age of boys basketball with nine teams making trips to the state finals between 1990 and 2006. Wandro took over at Hoffman in 1990 and led the program to unprecedented heights and Peoria twice during a tenure that lasted until 2011.
His two Elite Eight teams were a testament to adjusting to your talent. The 1996 team relied on point guard Marty Manning pounding the ball inside to 6-7 Nick Abruzzo, 6-5 Steve Gorman and 6-4 Mark Ganek. In 2004, it was a guard/perimeter-oriented team led by Jonny Reibel, Bryan Mead and Branden Jung that also became the first in MSL history to win 30 games in a season. Wandro led Hoffman to 8 regional and 2 MSL titles.
8. Glen Elms (Forest View and Prospect) - 314
Glen Elms matched wits and wit with the best of them during his 23 years as a head coach at Forest View and Prospect. Elms was never afraid to tell people what he thought and didn’t sugarcoat his own team’s shortcomings.
Elms won 4 regional titles and 141 games in the final 9 years Forest View was open before moving over to Prospect from 1986-2000. His 1990-91 team led by Jack Ecker and Keith Dunn took the Knights to their only supersectional appearance.
9. Kevin Katovich (Rolling Meadows) - 310
Playing for Tom McCormack at Conant and working for Glen Elms at Prospect gave Kevin Katovich a solid foundation for a head coaching career that started in 2002 at Meadows. The last few years have seen Katovich’s program take off with the school’s first 20-win season in nearly 30 years in 2019-20 and matching the school record with 28 wins and the claiming the first regional title in two decades last year.
The 15-0 MSL champs of 2020-21, led by current LA Lakers rookie Max Christie, will always be a “what might have been” in a COVID-shortened season with no IHSA postseason. This year’s tall and talented group led by Christie’s Minnesota-bound brother Cam is a “what could be” as it still has a rugged schedule ahead to prepare for a shot at Champaign and the school’s first boys basketball state trophy.
More Milestone Numbers
Steve Messer (291 wins at Hersey and Elk Grove) and Don Rowley (287 at Hersey) are 10th and 11th in MSL victories and still coaching. Messer is an assistant to Billy Pitcher at Lake Park and Rowley is an assistant to Austin Scott at Hersey … Bryan Tucker now has 253 wins at Barrington after a victory Tuesday night at Elk Grove. Tucker is just 13 wins shy of 500 for a career that includes stops at Loyola Academy and Marian Catholic … Dick Kinneman won 353 career games - with 156 at Prospect before he stepped down after the 1967-68 season to become Hersey’s first athletic director. He led Prospect’s first two Prospect teams to a 47-4 record … IBCA Hall of Famer Gaston Freeman won 560 games at Maine West, Streator and DePue. Freeman was at Maine West from its opening in 1959 until he retired in 1979 and his teams won the first two MSL titles in 1964 and 1965.