50 After 50: No. 39 Eagles wonder what could have been if not for QND roadblock

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. 39 — 1982-83 Liberty

LIBERTY, Ill. — The Liberty Eagles beat every team they played during the 1982-83 basketball season.

Except one.

That opponent, Quincy Notre Dame, handed Liberty its only two losses in 28 games, including a heart-breaking defeat in the regional championship game when the Eagles went cold offensively and were unable to hold onto a 10-point lead with just under 15 minutes remaining.

It marked the third time in four seasons Liberty was ousted by QND in the regional finals. The bitter ending took some of the shine off the finest regular season in school history to that point.

“I went to the super-sectional, Havana and Brussels,” said Mike Owen, a junior forward who later spent two seasons as Liberty’s head coach. “We had beaten Havana and we had beaten Brussels twice that year.

“You wonder what could have been if we had just gotten through Notre Dame.”

The Eagles, two seasons removed from an inspiring and improbable fourth-place finish in the Class A state tournament, won their first 15 games to climb to fourth in the state poll despite returning only two starters from a team that finished 21-5 the year before.

A balanced offense enabled Liberty to average 69 points per game during the regular season, led by Dennis Klingele. The 6-foot-3 senior averaged 13.8 points, 7.3 rebounds and 3.8 assists per game, and usually was tasked with the toughest defensive assignment.

Three other starters — 6-foot-2 guard Todd Jansen (12.6), 6-foot-6 forward Ron Gilbert (10.5) and the 6-foot-3 Owen (10) — averaged in double figures. Buddy Swartzenberg, a 6-foot-5 forward, added 7.3 points as a reserve before moving into the starting lineup late in the year.

“That was probably one of the biggest teams we had at Liberty,” Owen said.

After winning the Pike County Conference tournament in early December, the Eagles went on the road to play Palmyra on Dec. 17 – a team that featured two of Northeast Missouri’s top players in 6-foot-4 junior Darrin Hall and 6-foot-7 sophomore Greg Church.

Even with Klingele on the bench saddled with foul trouble for most of the game, Liberty opened a 42-30 lead after three quarters before holding on for a 55-54 victory. A late free throw by Klingele enabled the Eagles to withstand a 25-footer at the buzzer by Church, who went on to play at the University of Missouri.

However, it was in the championship game of the Havana Christmas Tournament against the host school when Liberty signaled it was for real.

The Ducks were unbeaten and featured a front line of 7-foot center David King, 6-71/2 forward Kevin King and 6-foot-3 forward Chip Boggs. Making matters even more imposing was the presence of 6-foot-6 ballhandling guard Trevor Trimpe.

After watching other teams shy away from the redwoods in the lane and try without success to beat Havana’s 1-3-1 zone from the perimeter, Liberty’s coach, the late Paul Kreke, decided the Eagles’ best strategy was to pressure Trimpe and attack the middle with their agility and quickness.

“I remember practicing for the Havana game,” Owen said. “Either me or Todd Jansen guarded Trimpe. Our main goal … was to jump him while he was bringing the ball up to get it out of his hands, so he wasn’t in control.”

It worked.

Scrappy center Kevin Blewett, at 5-foot-9½, had two early shots swatted away by David King while attacking the basket, but it set the tone that Liberty would not back down.

Swartzenberg, in his second season at Liberty after moving there from Las Vegas, came off the bench to score 21 points inside and Gilbert added 16 as Liberty overcame a scoreless showing by Klingele and a 13-for-25 effort from the free-throw line to win, 55-52.

That set the stage for a mid-January showdown with QND before an overflow crowd in The Pit. The Eagles were 15-0 and ranked fourth in the state and the Raiders were 14-1 and ranked sixth.

“I always loved playing at Notre Dame,” said Owen, who has been teaching GED classes at the Western Illinois Correctional Center in Mount Sterling since 2013 after spending 25 years as a teacher, coach and school administrator.

“I loved the atmosphere. It was always packed. A tough place to play, but you couldn’t ask for a better atmosphere.”

As often happens, however, the game didn’t live up to its billing. QND raced to an 18-5 lead in the first seven minutes and led 35-28 at the half. Liberty pulled within 39-36 at the 4:34 mark of the third quarter, but the Raiders reeled off 11 straight points to take control en route to an 81-65 victory.

Liberty rebounded to win its next 11 games, including victories over Payson Seymour and Mendon Unity in the regional, to earn a rematch with QND.

The Eagles, now ranked eighth in the state, appeared poised to avenge their only loss by taking a 27-19 halftime lead and increasing that advantage to 31-21 with 6:45 left in the third quarter.

Plagued by uncharacteristic turnovers and cold shooting, Liberty mustered only two more points that quarter and just six in the fourth. Meanwhile, 6-foot-7 all-stater Dan McCaughey scored 16 of his game-high 24 points in the second half as QND closed with a 31-8 run to win, 52-39.

“I don’t think we were built for outside shooting,” Owen said. “We had such a big team. When Buddy and Ron were playing, I was on the outside playing a guard position. All my life I had been a post player.”

Klingele, a valuable reserve on Liberty’s state tournament team who would go on to have a stellar career at Culver-Stockton College before it was derailed by an auto accident, finished his three-year high school career with a 74-13 record, but only one regional championship.

Four of those losses came at the hands of QND in six tries.

“It’s real hard to swallow,” he said after the regional defeat. “It’s just another loss, I guess, but it’s hard to take at the time. It’s going to be hard to read the papers and see QND on TV in the sectional because you keep thinking if you had worked a little bit harder it would have been you.”

Making it even harder was watching Havana go on to finish fourth in the state tournament, losing to eventual champion Lawrenceville and Marty Simmons by four in the semifinals.

Owen, however, would get some revenge the following season as a senior. He scored 10 of his game-high 16 points in the fourth quarter to help Liberty overcome an eight-point halftime deficit to stun heavily favored QND, ranked ninth in the state, 50-48 in overtime in the regional finals.

“A lot of people say, ‘Think about how many regionals you would have won if you did not have to go through Notre Dame,’ ” he said. “I was in high school for four years and Liberty won two (1981 and 1984). Don’t know what more you could expect.”