50 After 50: New coach, new style lead to repeat of postseason success for No. 33 Cardinals

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. 33 — 1993-94 Hamilton

HAMILTON, Ill. — After finishing fourth in the 1993 Class A state tournament, the Hamilton boys basketball team figured to have quite a rebuilding job.

Seniors Jason Havens, Shawn Stevenson, Ryan Lemon and John Holcomb had graduated, and Brian Stilwell left during the summer to become the head coach at Lawrenceville. Stilwell’s patterned, patient style was replaced by the more free-wheeling style of Clay Vass, who had guided A-C Central to a 26-3 record the year before, 

“At the time, I was a kid, and I was pissed,” said Kurt Meister, a senior on the 1993-94 Hamilton team. “But you go on, and I don’t blame (Stilwell) for leaving. (Lawrenceville) went and got him and offered him a job, and that was a big job to go to down there.

“He was kind of like a Bob Knight wannabe guy. He wouldn’t just let us run, like get out and go. He had us slow down and run plays, and that’s fine. It worked out well, and we got to the state tournament. Then Clay Vass came in, and he was kind of like, ‘Do guys you want to run?’”

The Cardinals still returned a solid core of players, beginning with Meister, a 6-foot-8 center who averaged 12.8 points and 8.9 rebounds as a junior. Also back were Darren Monroe and Todd Brownlee, who had played big roles the year before. Going out for the first time as a senior was Alex Beagles.

“He made a big difference, because he was a legit point guard,” Meister said.

Teams quickly found that to stop Hamilton, they had to stop Meister. And he felt that pressure as well.

“I wouldn’t say we had a target on our back, but I was a big dude, and because of (his junior) year, everybody knew who I was,” he said. “People got fired up to play us.”

Hamilton didn’t have the depth it enjoyed a year earlier, but there was plenty of talent. Meister averaged 19 points and 11 rebounds per game. Monroe added 16 points per game, and Brownlee was at 12 ppg.

The Cardinals’ first big victory of the season was an 85-74 victory at Quincy Notre Dame in late December. Meister contributed 25 points and 13 rebounds. 

“After we beat QND, we kind of realized, ‘Beating QND at the Pit is a pretty big deal,’” Meister said. “We could be pretty good. You know, I don’t think we ever said we’re going to the state tournament, but I think in our back of our minds, we thought we have a chance to do this again.”

After losing just three times during the regular season, Hamilton defeated Carthage 82-49 and Warsaw 79-58 to win the regional championship. 

In the final minutes of the Warsaw game, Hamilton fans chanted, “We want West Pike!” in reference to the sectional matchup against the undefeated Cardinals. Hamilton ended West Pike’s memorable run with a 69-55 victory in the semifinals at Bushnell, with the key play coming midway through the fourth quarter. Beagles thwarted a four-on-one with a steal, then threw the ball up the court to Meister for a dunk to put Hamilton ahead by 10.

A 61-51 victory over Beardstown in the sectional final then created a matchup all of Hamilton wanted — against undefeated A-C Central, Vass’ old team, in the super-sectional.

“We had the advantage (in Macomb), because those guys were really good, but you could tell they were kind of like, ‘Oh, my God, look at all these people,’” Meister said. “It was just another game for us, because we’d been there the year before. When we ran out for warmups, it seemed like the whole town was probably there. But we expected it. We knew what it was going to be like.”

Hamilton knocked off the No. 3-ranked Knights 45-44, with Monroe scoring on a layup with eight seconds left. A potential game-winning 3-point shot from the corner didn’t fall for A-C Central.

“You know what I remember? We actually got escorted through Carthage on the way back from Macomb to Hamilton,” Meister said with a laugh. “A fire truck from Carthage escorted us through Carthage. I hated Carthage! The Blueboys? Screw those guys.”

Hamilton finished with a 26-4 record after losing to Rockford Lutheran 56-52 in the Class A quarterfinals. Eric Clark, a 6-foot-8 center who went on to play collegiately at Rutgers, scored 25 points and grabbed 13 rebounds for the Crusaders. 

“The field (at the 1994 state tournament) was loaded that year,” Meister said. “Even if we had gotten by Rockford Lutheran, then we would have had to play (eventual state champion) Pinckneyville. And (eventual runner-up) Eureka was really good, too. That road after (the quarterfinal game) would have been pretty tough for us.”

Meister went on to play college basketball at South Dakota State. He has been a geography teacher at John Marshall High School in Rochester, Minn., for the past 23 years. He has a son who plays basketball at Minnesota-Duluth and a daughter who will play basketball at Indiana starting next season.

He says it’s difficult to describe to his kids what his high school experience was like.

“We were a game away from the state baseball tournament when I was a senior, and we got second in state in golf my junior year,” Meister said. “Our football team always was a playoff team. God, sports are so fun. It’s just hard to tell (my kids) what it’s like getting escorted through another town. 

“Everywhere I went, everybody knew who I was. We were walking through the mall one time in Quincy. It was a big deal to go to Quincy Mall. Ryan (Lemon, a senior on the 1993 team) and I were walking with our letter jackets, you know, big and bad. And some guy yells out, ‘Hey. Meister. Lemon. How’s it going?’ He knew who we were … in Quincy. We thought we were just the biggest studs in the history of the world.”