Prospect basketball memories rekindled after 60 years

The boys are back in town.

Well, they’re men now and have been for some time. But the players on Prospect High School’s 1965-66 boys basketball team will never forget that season of their youth.

This weekend teammates Dan Agard, Ray Kleinhuizen, Rick Pauly, J.D. Thorne, Craig Wolf and the leading scorer of that team as a junior, Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Famer Tom Lundstedt, will again be big men on campus.

Organized by Mike Korcek, a 1966 Prospect graduate inspired to go into journalism in part by this group and by the late, legendary Daily Herald sports editor Bob Frisk, becoming Northern Illinois University’s longest-tenured sports information employee on his own way to the IBCA Hall, the 1965-66 Knights will be welcomed back for a 60th reunion.

They’ll have a pregame reception Friday at Prospect and will be introduced to the crowd before the host Knights play Rolling Meadows at Walker Field House. Postgame revelry will be held at 10 p.m. at Whiskeyhill Brewery & Kitchen in Mount Prospect.

The reunion continues from 1-3 p.m. Saturday at The Red Barn Restaurant and Brewery in Mount Prospect.

The 1965-66 reunion is expected to draw family members, friends, classmates and current Prospect High folks such as principal Greg Minter, athletic director Scott McDermott and football coach Dan DeBoeuf.

This was a basketball team that went 21-5 in 1965-66, shared the Mid-Suburban League title, swept the Pontiac Holiday Tournament at 4-0 and won its own regional.

“We took great pride just playing for Prospect, and the tradition was terrific. We were a good team all told, and then our senior year we all came together,” said Thorne, a guard who was the second-leading scorer.

The 6-foot-3 Lundstedt, recruited by some 300 colleges for basketball and baseball — Michigan’s 1970 baseball MVP, he played in 44 games for the Cubs and Twins over three big-league seasons — led Prospect with 22.3 points a game on 63% shooting.

Korcek, who covered the team for the school newspaper and has watched countless games since, believes Lundstedt is the best 6-3 post player he’s seen.

Central to their success, however, was the next six regulars all averaged between Thorne’s 7.9 points and Wolf’s 5.5.

It was a group that believed, as Wolf said, “There’s no ‘I’ in the word, ‘Team.’”

“If you couldn’t get it into Tom,” said Wolf, a former Navy man now living in Cincinnati, “any of the other four was very, very capable.”

Coached by IBCA Hall of Famer Dick Kinneman and assisted by Don Arseneau, Thorne said Prospect ran a 1-2-2 offense with Lundstedt up top before he settled on the low block.

But encouraged by Kinneman to adjust on the fly, the Knights took what the defense gave them.

“We improvised a lot, and I always thought it was almost impossible to scout us because we didn’t even know what we were going to do,” Thorne said.

“We played it by ear, tried to get it down to ‘Lumpy,’ but we all could shoot, too. If we had a 3-point line we would have been really dangerous,” he said.

Wolf, who had a 42-inch vertical leap, called 1965-66 a “magical” season. He perhaps saw the writing on the wall when virtually the same team, many playing together since kids, went 17-1 on the junior varsity level the year before.

“The only thing different was, guess what — we ended up with this guy, Tom Lundstedt, on this team,” he said.

Thorne said that after a 1-2 start, the turning point to the season came after trailing Maine South by 17 points at halftime. Prospect rallied to win 66-65.

Kinneman, whom these boys loved and respected, scored with his halftime address.

“He said, ‘Son of a biscuit eater!’’ Thorne recalled. “We knew he was really mad when he said something like that. We deserved it.”

These men are now in their late 70s. When a decade ago they returned to Prospect for a 50th team reunion, Wolf said they may have suspected a 60th gathering was a “pie in the sky” goal.

Some, like Kinneman, have passed on. Others couldn’t make it for health reasons. Some couldn’t be located. A few declined, like Dave Kingman, who went on to hit moon shot home runs for the Cubs.

They’re in the thoughts of those who will be at Prospect this weekend.

“The big thing is the joy we still remember 60 years later of the times that we had together as a T-E-A-M,” Wolf said.

Thorne agreed.

“I think it’s important to us,” he said. “It happened 60 years ago, and it sticks with you your whole life.”

doberhelman@dailyherald.com