There was a time when state champions lost regional titles
The win-or-go-home format is what makes the state high school basketball tournaments so entertaining.
Entertaining and, yes, a little terrifying at the same time.
There's no tomorrow.
You've heard those words many times before, and you'll hear them again when the IHSA tourneys begin in February for girls and boys.
Every high school gets at least one chance, but you have to win to survive and play another day.
It wasn't always that way in the IHSA boys basketball tournament.
Illinois had back-to-back state champions in 1940 (Granite City) and '41 (Morton of Cicero) that had lost regional championship games but still got a second chance.
There was a tomorrow.
That piece of state sports history is just one of the fascinating parts in the new book "Men of Granite" by Dan Manoyan (Authorhouse, $24.95).
Manoyan, sports writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and native of Waukegan, looks at how young men with a hard-knocks background from the wrong side of the Granite City tracks in Southern Illinois became an agent for change in society by mastering the game of basketball.
The steel mills attracted Hungarian, Armenian, Yugoslavian and Macedonia immigrants who left behind genocide and oppression in search of a better life for their families.
The players learned their skills at Lincoln Place Center, a settlement house built by their parents with materials provided by the steel mills. They learned discipline from a woman, a former school teacher who considered her work at Lincoln Place Center a higher calling.
The teenager who paved the way for the foreigners in Granite City basketball was future University Illinois Whiz Kid and NBA star Andy Phillip, who was born Andras Fulop of Hungarian stock.
While Manoyan's book does a wonderful job showing how these Granite City kids battled tremendous odds and perceptions to win the state championship in 1940, I was particularly interested in finding out why the IHSA had adopted a second-chance format.
Who could possibly think a double-elimination tournament made sense?
"A spate of regional upsets in the 1930s forced the Illinois High School Association to re-evaluate its tournament format," Manoyan answers. "Interest was down because many observers felt that often the best teams had been eliminated in regional play.
"To remedy the situation, the IHSA adopted a rule in 1936 that allowed both the regional champions and the runners-up to advance to sectional play. And, for the first few years, at least, the new format seemed to work."
Manoyan points out that in 1936, four regional runners-up won sectionals, including Johnston City, which placed third in state. Carbondale, Woodstock and Ziegler made it to the state finals in 1937 after losing in regional title games.
Other schools lost regional title games and advanced to state over the next two seasons, but 1940 magnified the need for change.
Thirteen teams that lost in the regional finals worked their way back into the sectional championship games. Seven of those teams, all regional losers, advanced to the Sweet 16 in Champaign.
State champion Granite City, runner-up Herrin and fourth-place Champaign all lost in the regionals.
Granite City had lost to rival Wood River in the regional finals but then reversed the decision in the sectional title game.
In the historic 1940 title battle, Granite City posted a 24-22 victory over Herrin for its only state basketball championship.
Phillip fired up 23 shots and made 6, also hitting 3 free throws.
In 1941 Morton of Cicero beat Urbana for the state title, and both schools had suffered regional defeats.
"Two consecutive blemished champions was not what the IHSA envisioned when it put the rule into effect," Manoyan writes. "Only two regional losers -- Cicero Morton and Olney -- made it to state in 1942, but those two teams became the final two teams ever to make it to the state finals with a loss.
"The IHSA had seen enough, and the experiment was scrapped."
In today's world, fans would demand asterisks by those 1940 and '41 state titles.