50 After 50: After rare regional loss, No. 15 Saukees return to Champaign and put pieces in place for state championship

The Illinois High School Association created a second class for boys basketball for the 1971-72 school year. The 2020-21 season would have been the 50th year of the boys basketball small-school tournament. Muddy River Sports is celebrating 50 years of small-school boys basketball by ranking the 50 best teams in Adams, Brown, Pike and Hancock counties since 1972.

No. 15 — 1989-90 Pittsfield

PITTSFIELD, Ill. — Rebuilding seasons didn’t happen often in Pittsfield during the 1980s and 1990s. 

Yet after eight seniors graduated from an 18-10 team that lost to Griggsville in the regional championship game in 1989, the Saukees had to rely the following year on senior guard David Bess to lead a team of unheralded seniors and untested juniors, including Tony Baker, a transfer from Indiana who played sparingly as a sophomore.

“I didn’t have as much confidence in (Baker) initially as maybe as I should have,” Bess said with a laugh. “But I had a lot of confidence in myself. I even told people after that season that we’re not losing to Griggsville again, and I said I thought I was one of the top five best point guards in the state. We were going to state that year.”

The Saukees opened the season winning four games at the Midwest Tournament, walloping Triopia and Brown County by 40-plus points in the final two games. 

“For like seven or eight years in a row, the winner of that Thanksgiving tournament, whether it was us or Beardstown or North Greene, had gone to at least a super-sectional,” Bess said. “So we were pretty confident then shortly after that.”

Pittsfield then took on Chicago Dunbar, the No. 2-ranked team in the Chicago Tribune state poll, at Voshall Gym. The Saukees were without starters Baker and David Fox, and the Mightymen outscored Pittsfield 28-7 in the second quarter and won easily 85-55.

Twenty-four hours later, Dunbar defeated Quincy High School 84-69.

“Dunbar wasn’t a chump team,” Bess said. “We were just outgunned.”

The Saukees rebounded to beat Quincy Notre Dame 56-47 in their next game, then got 19 points from Baker to edge Jacksonville Routt 61-59 in overtime a week later. Baker then scored 17 points in a 69-54 victory over Southeastern to give Pittsfield a 9-1 start.

Pittsfield opened the Macomb-Western Holiday Tournament with a 76-50 victory over Monmouth, then steamrolled Payson Seymour 85-52 as Baker poured in 32 points. East Peoria fell short in a fourth-quarter rally as Pittsfield won 56-55 to reach the title game, and then Baker took a pass from Bess and made a turnaround jumper with five seconds remaining in a 63-61 double-overtime victory against Macomb. 

“The year before, we played Macomb down to the wire, and we got in a fight at half court,” Bess said. “We were gunning for Macomb (the next year), and it was a situation where I had to make a couple ridiculous plays to get us into overtime. That’s probably when we started wondering if there was anybody in Class A who could beat us.” 

Pittsfield’s winning streak reached 21 by the time the regular season ended. The Saukees,  ranked No. 2 in the final Class A regular season poll, were limiting opponents to less than 50 points per game. Bess averaged 11 points, 6.5 assists and more than five steals per game. Baker, who was named to the Associated Press Class A All-State team, led the team at 17.8 points per game, and senior Joe Jennings was chipping in 10 points per game. 

“We weren’t very good at first, and then Jennings kind of took the point (on Pittsfield’s run-and-jump man-to-an defense),” Bess said. “He was real good at playing off me, because I might go off script. Jennings had those long arms, and he was just a great guy to run and jump off of.”

The Saukees opened regional play at home and defeated Winchester 64-29. Bess then made his preseason prediction come true in a 90-57 thumping of Griggsville in the regional title game.

Jennings had 23 points in the sectional semifinals, and Pittsfield scored the last six points of the game to beat sixth-ranked Piasa Southwestern 60-55. Bess then hit a clutch 3-pointer and stole the ball twice in the final two minutes of Pittsfield’s 45-41 victory over No. 11-ranked Jacksonville Routt 45-41 in the sectional final.

Pittsfield then earned a trip to Champaign by opening up a 22-point lead in a 62-53 victory over No. 9-ranked Unity. The Mustangs turned the ball over 19 times.

“Unity was a good team, but their guard play just wasn’t there,” Bess said. “My goal (during the season) was to develop (Brian) Feezel because I knew for the next year, I knew he was going to be something special.”

Pittsfield’s third trip to Assembly Hall in school history ended the same way as the first two — with a loss in the quarterfinals. Norris City-Omaha-Enfield led 33-29 at halftime, then blew out Pittsfield in the second half to win 74-50. Center Reed Jackson bulled his way to 24 points for the Cardinals, and forward Clay Gray added 18. The run-and-jump forced only three turnovers in the first three quarters.

“We were only down by four at half, and I think we could have won,” Bess said. “Maybe we should have won. When the heat was on. I just went after it harder. Maybe we should have reined it in, but we’d won that way the whole year. In my mind, it was, ‘Well, I can try harder. I can run faster. I can get this done.’ But they handled our pressure on that big floor, they shot 70 percent in the second half, and that was a wrap.

“Maybe if I could have recognized, ‘Hey, you’ve been able to dominate teams for 30 out of 31 games, but you’re in the Elite Eight. There are players you might not be able to dominate.’ We should have played a little more half-court defense. It took me a couple years to realize maybe that was the only way we could have won that game.”

Losing in the quarterfinal doesn’t bother Bess much now, since the core of his team won the Class A state title in 1991.

“Hey, I got a state championship in the eighth grade, and I also won the Class A high jump championship, so I was already a state champion,” he said. “The main thing was getting Coach (Dave) Bennett that cherry on top of such a legendary career, and he got it the next year.”

Bess now lives in Hattiesburg, Miss., and retired after spending four years in the Marine Corps and 17 years in the Army. He was stationed at Camp Shelby in Hattiesburg, where he helped train the National Guard as active duty soldiers, and chose to remain there after his retirement.