Libertyville's Zyrkowski excited about Champaign connection

Already, plans are being made for next year.

Libertyville boys basketball coach Brian Zyrkowski is excited to go back to his old stamping grounds.

Over the holidays, the Wildcats hosted Champaign Central in a game that was arranged by athletic director John Woods, who used to be the athletic director at Champaign Central.

"It was a good game for us," said Zyrkowski, whose team got a 50-38 win. "It's nice to see other teams that you're not used to seeing."

Next year, the Wildcats will return the favor in the series and they'll travel to play Central on its turf in Champaign, which is where Zyrkowski used to call home.

Zyrkowski was a student at the University at Illinois in the mid-2000s.

He wants to coordinate his team's trip to Champaign Central next year with an Illinois men's basketball game. He became close to the program while he was at school because he was a practice player for the women's team.

"It was a great time," Zyrkowski said. "I played basketball in junior college before going to U of I and then when I got there, I would play basketball regularly with a bunch of really good players who all played on their high school teams. At one point, we got asked to be practice players for the women's team, so we did it and that was a lot of fun.

"We got to play in their facility and we got to be around the men's team, too. A lot of times we'd watch the men practice. That was back when Illinois was No. 1 and No. 2 in the country and we had guys like Dee Brown and Luther Head and Deron Williams and James Augustine. Thinking about that team and the season they had (advancing to the national championship game) gives me goose bumps."

Practicing with the women's team back then gave Zyrkowski and his buddies bruises and sore muscles.

"I remember getting pushed around like you wouldn't believe," Zyrkowski said. "People have no idea how physical these women in college are, a lot of people don't realize what a high level of basketball women's basketball in the Big Ten is.

"I always laugh when I hear high school boys saying that their team could take down the UConn women or whatever. No. Those women were really good. Some of them beat the heck out of me. Our guys don't say stuff like that. I've told the kids on my team all about women's college basketball, and they seem to get it."

Just as Zyrkowski likes to share war stories about his experiences with the Illinois women's team, he likes to pull out old videos of that 2005 national runner-up Illinois men's team for inspiration.

"I show our guys clips of U of I all the time because that team was so good at so many things, especially at being unselfish," Zyrkowski said. "No one on that team cared who scored and it made them a unique team. I tell our guys that could be us.

"We have a team this year in which we get a lot of people involved. A lot of people can score and contribute for us. We don't have just one go-to guy, we have a lot of guys who can make the tough play. We need to be unselfish like that, too."

Out and about Wildcats: Eureka! There really are high school kids out there who don't spend all of their free time on their smartphones.

"Our kids really love basketball, so they go out and watch basketball," Libertyville coach Brian Zyrkowski said.

Earlier this season, Libertyville's game at Lake Zurich got rescheduled because a water pipe burst near the Lake Zurich gym, making a game that night impossible.

So Zyrkowski decided to use his free night by scouting the Mundelein at Stevenson game. He wasn't prepared for who he'd see at the game.

"All of a sudden, our players all showed up there together," Zyrkowski said. "We ended up taking up a whole section in the bleachers. We had seniors there and sophomores there, pretty much our entire program.

"I really credit our seniors like Will Moore and Jackson Watson and Patrick Graham. Anytime there's something basketball to do, they all go and they get the younger kids involved, too. We also had guys show up to watch the Mundelein at Zion-Benton game as we were preparing to play Zion-Benton. Our guys like to watch game film together at each other's houses, too. They seem to really like getting out and preparing for our games."