Lake County basketball gets back to normal

Lake County boys basketball fans have been spoiled the last few years.

All of a sudden, we went from having a major Division I recruit once in a blue moon to having a whole mess of them all at once.

First it was Warren's Brandon Paul and Matt Vogrich of Lake Forest. Two years ago, they signed with Illinois and Michigan, respectively. Paul even went on to be named Lake County's first male recipient of Illinois' coveted Mr. Basketball award.

Now, they play major roles for their college teams as savvy sophomores.

Not to be outdone, last year's senior class upped the ante with four Division I recruits: Mundelein's Ben Brust, Deerfield's Duje Dukan, Waukegan's Jereme Richmond and Zion-Benton's Lenzelle Smith.

Brust and Dukan are both now playing at Wisconsin while Richmond and Smith are at Illinois and Ohio State, respectively.

What a goldmine Lake County had become for big-time recruiters, particularly those from the Big Ten.

That was a big change from what we were used to around here. In the previous 10-plus years, Lake County had produced just two major Division I basketball recruits.

“The number of high-level recruits here over that short two or three year period was really amazing,” Warren coach Chuck Ramsey said. “It was definitely unusual for us, but a nice change.”

A new basketball season is on the horizon, with season openers for many teams tipping off on Monday, and change is in the air again. The recruiting scene here in Lake County will power back down a bit. It won't be quite as crazy here this season, and maybe next season as well.

But that's not the only change.

Races in the North Suburban Conference, and for the two sectional crowns in the county, will be as wide open as ever, perhaps due in part to the relative lack of established superstars. Meanwhile, Lake County is also rolling out the welcome mat for four new head coaches: Tim Bowen at Carmel, Billy Pitcher at Lake Zurich, Chris Snyder at Lakes and Jim Roberts at Round Lake. That's the most at once in quite some time.

“It seemed like every team around here had a Big Ten player the last couple of years,” Libertyville coach Scott Bogumil said with a laugh. “You had to go into a lot of games thinking really hard about how you were going to shut down guys like that. It's nice that you're not necessarily going to have to think that way this year.

“There definitely aren't those kind of superstars out there this year.”

That's not to say that there aren't still some super seniors around here, or some good diaper dandies coming up through the ranks. It's just that the glam factor might be temporarily dialed down a few notches, compared to what it has been.

Senior center Ryan Sawvell of Mundelein is probably the most prized recruit around here at this point, and he will be playing next year at the University of Evansville, a mid-major Division I program in Indiana.

Teammate Robert Knar, a guard at Mundelein, is already getting major Division I attention. But he's just a sophomore this season.

Meanwhile, senior guard Aaron Simpson of North Chicago is getting a lot of Division I looks but has yet to make a decision.

Warren juniors Darius Paul and Nathan Boothe are the younger siblings of Division I basketball players (Brandon Paul and Stanford center Sarah Boothe) and have the tools to follow in their footsteps. But both are still works in progress.

Finally, Zion-Benton forward Malik Yarbrough is already on all the big-time recruiting radars. But he is only a freshman.

“I don't think there are any Brandon Pauls out there. You know, people ranked real high by (the recruiting services). But there's still a lot of good talent around here,” Stevenson coach Pat Ambrose said. “It's just going to take some time for that (top-tier) talent to emerge. We've got a lot of really good players who are young right now.

“This season is still going to be good, though. The quality of basketball here is still very high and it just continues to get better.”

Getting to know you

Here are a few tidbits about Lake County's newest boys basketball coaches: Billy Pitcher at Lake Zurich, Tim Bowen at Carmel, Jim Roberts at Round Lake and Chris Snyder at Lakes.

Write decision: Had he not had a last-minute epiphany in college, Billy Pitcher would be writing about basketball, not coaching it.#8220;I wanted to write about sports. I wanted to be a sportswriter,#8221; said Pitcher, Lake Zurich's new head coach. #8220;I loved to play every sport in high school and that seemed like a great job to me.#8221;Then, it occurred to Pitcher that coaching would be even greater.He wanted to stay close to sports after his playing days were over and coaching would do that even more so that sportswriting.#8220;I changed my major to education because I kind of just realized that coaching really appealed to me,#8221; Pitcher said.Pitcher, who went to Southern Illinois after graduating from Normal Community High School, did his student teaching at Belleville East and then immediately joined the high school coaching ranks. He worked briefly on the basketball staff at Elk Grove and was even the girls golf coach at Libertyville while he assisted with basketball.And he did it all before the age of 30.#8220;I've been very fortunate to get so many opportunities so young,#8221; Pitcher said. #8220;And now that I'm a head basketball coach, I'm really looking forward to coaching at a higher level where there is more at stake.#8221;Familiar faces: Before Carmel takes on Grayslake Central next week at the Mundelein Thanksgiving tournament, few stones will be left unturned.

The two programs know each other too well, and have too many ties, starting with new Carmel coach Tim Bowen. His last job as a head coach was at Grayslake Central, where he spent eight years beginning in the early 2000s.

But Bowen's connection to Grayslake Central doesn't end there. He's still a science teacher at the school. In fact, he has many of the current boys basketball players, such as Jordan Taylor, Sayvonte McWilliams and Casey Boyle, in his chemistry and physics classes.

#8220;It will be a little weird (coaching against his students),#8221; Bowen said. #8220;I obviously have some strong ties with those kids. We kind of talk about it in class, we joke about it.

#8220;There will definitely be no ill will coming from either side, but I can also tell you that none of us wants to lose.#8221;

In the genes: People frequently ask new Round Lake coach Jim Roberts how he became a basketball coach instead of a football coach.After all, Roberts' father Rich was the head football coach at Buffalo Grove for years beginning in 1990.But before that, the elder Roberts was actually a basketball coach. In fact, he served as head basketball coach at Buffalo Grove just before he got the head football job.#8220;I remember when I was younger being dropped off from school to the gym and I would hang out with my dad during basketball practice,#8221; said Roberts, who will coach in his first game as a head coach next week. #8220;I would spend my entire winter at the gym.#8220;I loved football growing up, too. But I think my first serious exposure to sports was with basketball when my dad was coaching. It just kind of stuck with me. Plus, I was probably better at basketball.#8221;Roberts attended high school at Lake Zurich and became a star basketball player there. He says his coaching philosophies are derived from many influences, including former Lake Zurich coach John Zarr, former Buffalo Grove girls coach Tom Dineen, his college coaches at Northern Michigan and his mentors at some early jobs at Leyden, Lincoln Park and Barrington High Schools.But the voice he listens to most is the same voice he's been listening to for years.#8220;My dad just sent me an e-mail the other day,#8221; Roberts said with a laugh. #8220;It had exclamation points all over it. He was asking me if I had put this defense in yet and that play in yet. He is so excited about this for me.#8221;A good day: Finding out that he had been named the new head boys basketball coach at Lakes was a pretty big moment for Chris Snyder.

But it wasn't even his best moment of that day.

Snyder says getting to be a head coach at the age of 30 is a dream come true, but so is being a dad.

Believe it or not, the day Snyder was named the Eagles' new head coach back in May was the same day that his first child was born. Daughter Mia is now seven months old.

#8220;That turned out to be a pretty good day,#8221; Snyder said with a laugh.

pbabcock@dailyherald.com