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Basketball, Chicago Tribune, College

OUR LOCAL PRODUCTS GROW IN STATURE

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The Battle of Chicago, such as it was, went to the locals from Loyola, those basketball players who do not need a road map or a flashlight to find Lower Wacker Drive.

Local knowledge being what it is, Loyola also did not have to ask directions to find the basket, though De Paul, the visitor on its home floor at the Horizon, could have used a Seeing Eye dog or a tour guide and not found it.

The final accounting of Tuesday night’s tussle was 78-71, which is either a victory for home cooking or a loss for imported talent, maybe both.

Whatever deeper significance there is in that must be left to sociologists and recruiters, not necessarily the same people, though the emphasis of the two programs was clearly decided in favor of Loyola’s home- grown strategy for one night at least.

“We are the Chicago team,” said Loyola’s Alfredrick Hughes. “We wanted to prove it tonight.”

“They (De Paul) are a Chicago team, too,” said Loyola coach Gene Sullivan, which can only be interpreted as a compliment from a man who recruits only as far as his eye can see.

It was not quite civil war, not that it was a happy block party, either. It was more like your average neighborhood clock cleaning. Both sides walked away more or less friends and no blows were struck in anger.

“This game was personal,” said De Paul’s Marty Embry. “I guess you could say it was for bragging rights this summer. We’re just going to have to wait one long year.”

“The local products really wanted to beat us,” said De Paul’s Dallas Comegys.

Most notable of those were Loyola’s Hughes and Andre Battle, who threw balls into the basket at times and from places on the floor no one could have expected, least of all De Paul.

Hughes and Battle finished first and second in scoring for the night with 28 and 23 points, Hughes, in fact, becoming the eighth-highest scorer in college basketball history.

“It’s nice being known as the best player (in Chicago),” Hughes said. “But you want to be on the best team. I think I’m on the best team.”

In his four years of playing against De Paul, Hughes has scored 27, 26, 42 and 28 points, for which he may expect the entire Meyer family to be at his graduation, wishing him well. And good riddance.

It took Hughes a little longer to get his act together this last time. He had only nine points at the half, as did Battle, with Hughes playing mostly at center. In the second half, Hughes moved farther from the basket and found it more easily.

“You can’t keep Mr. Hughes down all game,” said Sullivan. “You can’t keep Mr. Battle down all game.”

Still, how Loyola accomplished all of this is not quite clear, since the Ramblers were shorter than De Paul and outrebounded the Demons 54-47, and they shot from much farther away and hit 42 percent of the time to De Paul’s 33.

“If you don’t put the ball in the hole,” said De Paul coach Joey Meyer, “you can’t win basketball games.”

Not one De Paul player made as many as half of his shots, with Tyrone Corbin getting only 4 of 13, Embry getting 5 of 15 and Comegys 5 of 13.

“I thought we had good shots,” said Meyer. “They just didn’t go in.”

And when they didn’t, it was usually a Loyola player who got the ball, rather than someone from De Paul.

“I thought the key for us was Ivan Young in the first half,” said Sullivan.

Young replaced starting center Andre Moore barely four minutes into the game when Moore picked up three fouls. Young scored eight points and got eight rebounds.

“Once Moore went out,” said Comegys, “that was when we should have destroyed them inside.”

De Paul should have done lots of things this season, but hasn’t, having now lost seven games, and two of those at the Horizon. At 15-7, De Paul looks like a less desirable NCAA invitee than does Loyola at 17-5.

“This game had lots of local interest,” said Sullivan, “but it had a national significance, too. We are both after at-large bids to the NCAA and whoever got the loss would be set back.

“I think we’ll get a bid and I think De Paul will get one, too. They’re a good team. We’re a good team.”

“We just can’t seem to turn the corner,” said Meyer. “When the offense plays well, the defense falls apart. When the defense is on, the offense is off.

“The road just doesn’t get any easier.”

Basketball, Chicago Tribune, College

JOEY? HOW ABOUT EARLY RETIREMENT?

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The thing for Joey Meyer to do, obviously, is to announce he is retiring as De Paul basketball coach at the end of the season, not an original strategy but nonetheless worth a try. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

It worked for his father Ray, who only lost half as many games as Joey has lost already with the same team.

Besides, all the common motivators are used up. Revenge didn’t work. Dayton whipped De Paul worse the second time than the first, and paid its own way here to do it.

The Horizon winning streak is gone, dead at 36. No longer can De Paul depend on the home-hangar advantage, which has always been greatly magnified by the astonishment of visitors realizing they did not have to dribble around parked aircraft or dress like Mr. Goodwrench.

Defending a high national ranking is a memory. That incentive was half gone before the latest loss and is sure to disappear completely the next time AP voters express an opinion on the Blue Demons. There may not be enough fingers on the starting five to count De Paul’s position among America’s college basketball elite.

Even the threat of losing a bid to the NCAA tournament is inconclusive. So many teams are invited to join the march through March that even twin- hyphened colleges that get their mail RFD have booked rooms with running water in Lexington, Ky., where the four finalists will gather in eventual resolution.

By winning just half of its remaining eight games, De Paul can expect at worst to be exiled to some remote tournament outpost, playing the late game against the top seed, a fate usually reserved for the Ivy League sacrifice or any school that has Baptist as a last name.

And who can say that, just as this season has gone exactly the opposite of what was expected, the usual tournament results will not be reversed, too? De Paul losing early is not quite as unusual as De Paul losing late, though it has been done that way, too. In fact, the last time De Paul made the Final Four, that is precisely the way it was done. With eight games remaining in the 1978-79 season, De Paul had already lost four, including one each to Dayton and Western Michigan, a pair of familiar curses.

Edgy about missing the then considerably smaller NCAA tournament field, De Paul worried its way into an invitation, not losing (to Loyola) until it had been anointed. Indiana State and Larry Bird subsequently disposed of De Paul in the semis.

Mark Aguirre’s considerable presence at the time may be enough to make present comparisons seem foolish, though Dallas Comegys and Tyrone Corbin have big enough feet to wear one each of Aguirre’s shoes, and Comegys alone has enough room to share the question mark that Aguirre has never quite been able to erase.

Having Kenny Patterson running the De Paul offense has not proved to be lethal, but one suspects that as a senior, Patterson has somehow regressed to the point where he might not even be recruited by De Paul today.

The important thing for De Paul to realize is that it doesn’t have to look any further than the school yearbook to find the recipe for redemption.

Joey Meyer has gallantly taken the blame for all of this, which is the least he can do, even if he was in the most unenviable of all positions for a first-year coach. Meyer had to start his coaching career without benefit of a single excuse.

Other coaches inherit the mistakes of strangers. They get three years to be repairmen before judgments are made. Meyer took over a winner from a relative. He did not have to introduce himself to his players or his players to his methods, which immediately removed the most handy alibi for failure.

The biggest move he had to make was one seat up on the bench. He assumed a 26-3 team with exactly the same players save Jerry McMillan, who no one imagined would be missed.

Meyer’s mission was to not botch things up, and there is not enough evidence yet to determine whether he has or not.

All that is known is that these players are not performing for the son as intensely or effectively as they did for the father. The present danger is that the De Paul basketball season will come down to an argument against heredity.

PHOTO: Joey Meyer.