MSL Basketball: Palatine was a Headliner in the Early 1960s
Pirates Won Consecutive North Suburban Conference, Regional Titles with Future Pro Ron Kozlicki
Palatine basketball hit rock bottom in 1959 when first-year head coach Dick Kolze’s team finished with only 1 victory in 22 games and went winless in the old Tri-County Conference.
It was a fourth consecutive losing season for the program and the future didn’t look all that bright. Out of sight, however, was some potential hope in the arrival of a big eighth-grade kid who moved in from Chicago’s Northwest Side.
The improvement was slow as Ron Kozlicki jumped to the varsity to stay late in his freshman year. Then came the big leap into the spotlight as Palatine and Kozlicki capped a magical two-season run with North Suburban Conference and regional championships and a 43-8 overall record.
The 6-foot-7 Kozlicki was the headliner who legendary Daily Herald prep columnist Bob Frisk called “the first legitimate high school basketball star for the Northwest Suburbs.” He was wooed by some of the country’s most prominent college coaches of that era and ended up playing professionally.
It was all part of a memorable and special time for a school and basketball program that is playing for another conference title 60 years later in tonight’s Mid-Suburban League championship game against Rolling Meadows.
A Pleasant Surprise in ‘61-’62
Palatine went 3-17 in 1959-60 as Kozlicki started with the freshmen but made his way up through the sophomores, junior varsity and ultimately to the varsity. There was significant improvement in 1960-61 at 9-14 as 5 of its losses in its first year in the North Suburban Conference were by 4 points or less and two were in overtime.
It finished tied for sixth in the eight-team league and legendary Palatine High School superintendent G.A. McElroy, who also moonlighted as a columnist with his weekly “Mac Says” for Paddock Publications (in the pre-Daily Herald days), wrote the “guess is a first-division berth (top half) and a contender next season.”
Kozlicki would be joined by third-year varsity forward John Seehausen in 1961-62. Jim Valukas, John Roberts, Reece Thome and Don Skinner, a longtime educator and administrator in District 211, were also key players for Kolze and the Pirates. Kozlicki had an incredible start to the season when he scored their first 21 points and finished with 23 in a win over Niles West and Jim Hart, who spent 18 of his 19 seasons as an NFL quarterback with the St. Louis Cardinals.
They started 3-1 in the NSC and then won the St. Charles and Fenton tournaments over the holidays. Kozlicki’s Fenton-record 72 points in 3 games included outscoring 5-time Gold Glove third baseman and future big-league manager Doug Rader 23-19 in a 6-point title game win over Glenbrook.
An 11-2 start was the program’s best in 18 years. But any hopes of an NSC title appeared to dim as Palatine blew a 6-point halftime lead at Zion-Benton and lost 74-62. Mo Tharp, who would be involved in plenty of big battles with Palatine during his 27 years as Fremd’s head coach from 1975-2002, scored 20 for the Zee-Bees.
Palatine trailed Zion by 2 games and needed to get rolling and get some help. Both happened with the help coming from a flu outbreak at Zion that kept one-third of the students out of school - including some key players - going into a doubleheader NSC weekend. Zion lost twice and Palatine won twice with Kozlicki coming just shy of the school record for points with 37 and Seehausen scoring 29 in a 23-point win over Crystal Lake.
Both teams were tied for the lead and stayed that way going into a late-February NSC title showdown where Palatine (18-3) hosted Zion (16-3). More than 3,000 jammed into the old gym saw the Pirates pull away from a 1-point halftime lead for a 66-51 win to clinch at least a share of their first title since 1943 in the Northwest Conference. Seehausen had 22, Kozlicki 18, Roberts 15 and Skinner 7. Kozlicki held Zion’s 6-4 Jim Taylor to 12 of his 19-point average and Tharp scored 9 points.
McElroy called it “athletically the finest weekend in school history” as the wrestling team also won the sectional and sent five competitors to the state tournament. Palatine’s basketball team celebrated the outright NSC title at home by rallying from a 3-point halftime deficit to beat longtime rival and nemesis Barrington 54-45. Kozlicki had 13 of his 22 in the fourth quarter and Seehausen had 15. They would end up on the NSC all-conference team with Tharp.
There was more history as Palatine beat Barrington for a third time for its first regional title. The Pirates would take a 23-3 record to the local sectional showplace of Arlington’s Grace Gym against 12-11 Maine East. But McElroy’s warning in his “Mac Says” column that Palatine didn’t play well in its three regional games came to fruition as Maine East took the lead for good late in the first quarter of a 67-54 victory.
Kozlicki had 25 and Seehausen added 19 as he set the school’s career scoring record that wasn’t going to last very long.
Perfection in ‘62-’63
Having Ron Kozlicki back was a good place to start the 1962-63 season for Palatine but the big question was who would Kolze find to fill the other four starting spots opened up by graduation.
The season started well for Kozlicki but not the Pirates. He scored 34 in a 1-point loss to Niles West before a meeting in the annual “Sleigh Bells Game” with Arlington and future Kansas City Royals pitcher Paul Splittorff, who holds the franchise record for victories with 166, and Gary Brodnan. Kozlicki’s 39 broke the 11-year-old school record of Paul Schrage by 1 point but the Cardinals had five in double-figures - with 16 from Splittorff and 13 from Brodnan - and continued its dominance in the trophy game.
The Pirates would rebound from the 0-2 start to win their first 3 in the NSC and Mike Leifer, Bob McWilliams and Jerry Olson were coming along nicely to support Kozlicki. There would be no holiday tournament title this time as they were eliminated in the second round at DeKalb by eventual champion Elgin 49-33.
But they kept winning in the NSC to set up a big showdown for the league lead as the Palatine (9-3) visited Libertyville (9-1). The standing-room-only crowd of 2,400 saw the defending champions shoot 66 percent from the field and dominate all phases in a 67-48 victory led by Kozlicki (28 points, 21 rebounds), McWilliams (12 points, 13 rebounds), Leifer (12 points, 10 rebounds) and Olson (9 points).
Everything seemed to be on cruise control for the Pirates until an unlikely source, an internal newspaper column “battle” in the Paddock pages of all places, had the potential to cause some serious friction.
On Jan. 24, Paddock’s Tom Tully, who covered the Pirates, delivered the first punch with a column assessing their season. It was something you might read about a pro team as he specifically called out a couple of players by name as poor ballhandlers and said the team’s ballhandling was subpar. Tully said they were lucky in their first 5 NSC games and Kozlicki “carried the Pirates on his back.” He did compliment their defense, rebounding and “abundance of guts” for their success.
One week later, McElroy counter-punched in “Mac Says.” He said in his opinion Tully’s column was in poor taste. He said Palatine’s guards were good ballhandlers and the team hadn’t won on luck or being carried on Kozlicki’s back.
“This is the best basketball team ever to represent Palatine High and it has come about through exceptionally fine coaching which has stressed fundamentals, skills, defense, teamwork and morale,” McElroy wrote.
“Kozlicki was a great player from the start this year and a number of others are fast developing into the same category. This team has not been lucky except to have a fine coach, a great player, a squad of top students scholastically, a group of boys who play together as a unit and the skill and spirit to be successful.
“We are sure that Tom is happy he has a winner to write about and that his intentions in discussing the players and team are of the best. We, of course could be a bit prejudiced and proud of this team as an official of Palatine High School who has always liked the way coach Kolze has handled both himself and his teams.”
It was a bit shocking reading all of this since Bob Frisk was the sports editor and he definitely promoted a positive tone for high school coverage. I would assume the “Onions & Orchids” file he kept of letters (yes, back when people wrote letters) of compliments or complaints had a few on this issue. One could only imagine the reaction of social media if there was such a thing 60 years ago.
It had no effect as Kozlicki had a record weekend by breaking his own single-game school record with 41 at Crystal Lake (now Central) and 29 to shatter the NSC career mark. McWilliams, Olson and Leifer were also picking up their scoring as the Pirates beat Libertyville 56-44 before a standing-room only crowd to roll to another league title with a 14-0 record and 3-game advantage.
Now Paddock writers McElroy and Tully were on the same page with their disdain that Kozlicki was the only Palatine player on the 10-team NSC all-conference team and it didn’t include McWilliams. He was a big part as it rolled through the three regional games with no trouble.
And in a 25-point regional championship win over Libertyville, Kozlicki didn’t just put on a 38-point, 12-rebound show for the fans but also for the legendary Adolph Rupp, who won 876 games and four NCAA titles in 41 years as Kentucky’s head coach.
Rupp called Kozlicki “one of the two best college prospects in the country” along with another guy who would become a fairly familiar in hoops history named Pat Riley.
“I didn’t even know Rupp was going to be there, but my folks knew and coach Kolze knew,” Kozlicki told Frisk before his 1999 induction into the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame along with Palatine’s Kevin McKenna. “Fortunately I had a good game.”
That would be an understatement as his 13-for-18 shooting propelled the 20-3 Pirates into the Arlington sectional and a rematch with 19-6 Elgin coached by the legendary Bill Chesbrough. Palatine turned a 10-point halftime deficit into a 1-point lead but Elgin scored the last 4 points for a 63-60 victory.
And that ended the great two-year run. Kozlicki scored 1,558 career points, made every all-state team, was a Parade All-American and one of five players on the inaugural Paddock All-Area team with Brodnan and York star Jim Dawson. Kozlicki was reported to have more than 60 scholarship offers but he opted to stay close to home and go to Northwestern where he could get a balance of athletics and academics.
Kozlicki averaged 13 points and 9 rebounds a game in three varsity seasons (freshmen were not eligible to play for the varsity then) with the Wildcats. He was taken in the fourth round of the 1967 NBA Draft by the San Diego (now Houston) Rockets but opted to play with the Indiana Pacers of the new American Basketball Association.
Kozlicki averaged 3 points and 2 rebounds in 37 games with the Pacers and along with Dawson was part of a big postseason trade to Minnesota for Hall of Fame big man Mel Daniels. The deal was significant enough to get Kozlicki mentioned in Terry Pluto’s great book “Loose Balls,” about the wild history of the ABA as Daniels helped lead the Pacers to three ABA titles. Kozlicki decided to end his pro career and go into a successful business career where he remained in frequent contact through the years with Frisk.
Unfortunately for Palatine basketball it went a long descent after Kozlicki and crew departed as it finished 2-19 and lost all 14 of its games in its final season in the NSC. Two years later the school joined the MSL, during the early stages of a 15-year streak of losing seasons that was finally broken when it went 20-7 under Ed Molitor in 1978-79.
Fittingly, the Pirates celebrated the 30-year anniversary of the Ron Kozlicki glory years with its only MSL title in 1993 under Molitor. Tonight they will try to recapture some of those glory days again in the league’s showcase game.