50 After 50: Summer league battles prepare No. 38 Raiders for run at regional crown

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. 38 — 1982-83 Quincy Notre Dame

QUINCY — Dan McCaughey saw going up against past and present players from the Quincy High School basketball team during summer league games in Quincy College’s Memorial Gym in the early 1980s as a “measuring stick.”

The Blue Devils, after all, posted a 123-5 record in the four seasons from 1979 to 1982 and finished second, first and third in the Class AA state tournament. Their dominance was punctuated by a then-Illinois record 64-game winning streak.

The Douglas brothers — Keith, Bruce and Dennis — and Michael Payne all went on to play Division I college basketball. Steve Ball and Michael Rudd stayed closer to home and played for QC, then an NAIA powerhouse coached by Sherrill Hanks.

All were summer league regulars.

“The talent in Quincy College’s gym was a big deal,” remembers McCaughey, an all-stater for Class A Quincy Notre Dame. “It was about as good as you could get in the state of Illinois. They gave us all they had. They really made us better.

“Playing Quincy High in summer league ball was the measuring stick. We knew if we could compete with those guys that we could play with anybody in the state. When the ’83 season came around, there wasn’t a team we didn’t think we could compete with.”

Despite playing in Quincy High School’s shadow, Notre Dame was coming off 23- and 25-win seasons when the 1982-83 campaign began. At 6-foot-7, McCaughey was, at the time, the rare big man who could run the floor, handle the ball and play both inside and on the perimeter.

He was returning for his third season as a starter. The biggest question mark was how the Raiders would replace the other four starters from a team that advanced to the sectional championship game the year before, losing to Havana.

“We had a lot of confidence,” McCaughey said. “The two years before had laid the foundation. We had some depth and thought we could do some things.”

Notre Dame featured one of the tallest frontlines in West-Central Illinois in seniors McCaughey, Mark Wiemelt (6-6) and Kevin Meyer (6-4). Meyer, one of the first players off the bench as a junior, used his quickness and jumping ability to play taller than his listed height on both ends of the floor.

In addition, senior Tim Bichsel (6-4) and junior Steve Bichsel (6-5) came off the bench.

“I’d like to think we played above the rim a lot back then,” McCaughey said.

Jeff McCaughey, Dan’s cousin, was returning from an injury-plagued season at one guard spot and sophomore Greg Reis muscled his way into the other backcourt slot. Junior Neil Mayfield was the first guard off the bench. All stood 5-foot-10.

QND opened the season by winning the Thanksgiving tournament in Jacksonville.

Dan McCaughey scored 35 points in a 59-52 second-round victory over Chicago St. Gregory and followed it up with 31 points and 16 rebounds in the championship game against the host school. The Raiders rallied from a five-point deficit with 1:32 to play in regulation to win 72-70 in overtime.

They were 8-0 when they went to St. Louis in mid-December to face St. Louis University High, which had lost to DeSmet in the Missouri Class 4A state championship game the previous March.

Led by all-stater Ted Mimlitz, who went on to play for the University of Missouri, the Junior Billikens rolled to a 60-39 victory to provide a wake-up call. QND missed 42 of 57 field-goal attempts in that game.

“I remember Kevin Meyer was really upset that we had lost,” Dan McCaughey said. “I mean, we were all upset because we didn’t play well at all, but Kevin was really upset.

“I remember him saying, ‘You think you’re the only one around here who doesn’t like losing, Dan? You’ve had two years to do this (start on the varsity) and this is my only year. We shouldn’t lose the rest of the year.’ ”

QND defeated Pittsfield 57-55 in overtime in the semifinals of the Macomb-Western Holiday Tournament and then rolled past Hamilton 77-59 in the championship game when Meyer, who averaged 15.5 points and 7.3 rebounds per game that season, led four players in double figures with 18 points.

Dan McCaughey was voted the tournament’s most valuable player, an award his uncle, Jim McCaughey, earned in 1955 while playing for Notre Dame High School, a forerunner to QND.

That set the stage for a mid-January Friday night showdown with Liberty. The Eagles were 15-0 and ranked fourth in Class A and the Raiders were 14-1 and ranked sixth. The teams had met in the regional championship game in each of the previous three seasons.

QND jumped to an 18-5 lead in the opening seven minutes and led 35-28 at the half. Liberty pulled within 39-36 midway through the third quarter, only for the Raiders to reel off 11 unanswered points en route to a convincing 81-65 victory.

The following night, Pittsfield avenged its earlier loss by beating QND 61-51. The Raiders would also lose to Monmouth and Columbia Hickman — another Missouri 4A school featuring a future Mizzou player in Cecil Estes — down the stretch.

Still, they entered the regional tournament 21-4 and ranked 12^th in the state. They defeated Barry 82-63 in the semifinals as the three frontline players combined for 58 points to set up a rematch with Liberty, now ranked eighth, in the title game.

It looked like Liberty was going to avenge its earlier loss for the first 17 minutes when it opened a 31-21 lead. But QND turned up the defensive pressure, forcing turnovers, and the Eagles went cold from the field.

Dan McCaughey scored 16 of his game-high 24 points in the second half to help the Raiders go on a 31-8 run to close out a 52-39 victory.

“We used to full-court press a lot,” he said. “We got a lot of turnovers that way.”

That set up a return date with Havana, only this time in the sectional opener. The Ducks could match the Raiders’ size inside with David King (7-foot), Kevin King (6-71/2) and Chip Boggs (6-3). Six-foot-six guard Trevor Trimpe, who later played for Bradley, was a matchup problem.

Notre Dame controlled the tempo early with its full-court pressure and dominance on the boards, drawing fouls on Havana’s big men inside.

However, the Raiders couldn’t capitalize. They missed 10 of their first 13 field goal attempts and six of their first eight free throws and turned the ball over six times in the first quarter. The result was an ugly 14-8 deficit.

“QND had a chance but didn’t cut off the head,” Havana coach Bob Gregurich said after the game.

The Ducks led 32-22 at halftime and then opened the second half with a 10-2 run to effectively put the game out of reach. In shades of the SLUH game, the Raiders shot just 23 percent from the field, including a dreadful 6-for-35 in the second half. They missed 14 of 24 free throws.

The one-two scoring punch of Dan McCaughey and Meyer combined for just 16 points, missing 15 of their 20 shots. McCaughey’s five points marked the first time in his postseason career that he failed to score at least 17 points.

The result was a 71-38 loss. Havana went on to finish fourth in the Class A state tournament, losing to eventual champion Lawrenceville and Marty Simmons by four in the semifinals. QND bowed out with a 23-5 record.

Dan McCaughey averaged 16.6 points, 8.9 rebounds and 5.5 assists per game as a senior. He finished his career with 1,329 points, fourth on the school’s all-time list, and shared the Quincy Herald-Whig’s Player of the Year award with Dennis Douglas.

The Raiders were 71-14 during his three-year career.

He signed with Eastern Illinois University out of high school but eventually spent three years at Southeastern Louisiana University, a mid-major in Hammond, La.

 “We got a chance to play all the big schools at the time,” he said. “We were a rent-a-win team for a lot of those schools. But it proved to be the gateway to moving into the business world.”

McCaughey and his wife, Gina, have four sons and live in Baton Rouge, La.

He is currently involved with an electric vehicle charging station distributorship after spending 22 years as a major account executive with Pitney Bowes and nearly a dozen years building a business that eventually equipped 350 nursing homes in seven states with negative wound therapy medical equipment.

Meyer graduated from the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine and is a general surgery specialist in Clarksville, Ark., after spending more than 20 years in a similar capacity in Louisiana. Wiemelt graduated from Bradley University and the Harvard Law School and is a patent attorney based primarily in Chicago.

Nearly 40 years later, Dan McCaughey tries to put his high school career in perspective.

“It seems to me the chase was more important than the catch,” he said. “I don’t think we ever talked about a goal of being state champions. We just wanted to be as good as we could be. There is such a thing as Raider Pride.

“Sure, it’s disappointing to not have played in the state tournament, on that platform, but I wouldn’t trade my three years for one weekend in Champaign.”