Homewood-Flossmoor basketball coach Don Laketa was talking in a monotone in a corner of the East Aurora locker room Tuesday, but Ken Ridgway wasn`t fooled by his calm demeanor.
”Coach never shows emotion,” said Ridgway, a 6-foot- 1/2-inch senior guard. ”No one has ever seen him excited. But I knew something was different about this year when I hit a shot to beat Bloom Trail and I heard he jumped off the bench. That`s when I knew something was different.”
There is something different about this H-F team. By defeating Elgin 58-42 in the Class AA East Aurora supersectional, the Vikings became the first H-F team since 1967 to reach the Elite Eight in Champaign. Laketa began coaching the team in 1972-73.
H-F (24-4) will play Rockford Boylan (29-2) Friday in the second quarterfinal game.
”Hey, I`m 52 years old, but I feel like I`m 15,” Laketa said. ”And I hope to be coaching when I`m 62 and I hope I can go Downstate when I`m 62. When you work with kids you feel like a kid.”
H-F jumped to a 9-2 lead after Ridgway and Tracy Wilson, a 6-2 1/2 senior forward, turned steals into baskets. Elgin (17-12) never came closer than three points after that. The Maroons cut H-F`s 29-21 halftime lead to 29-25 in the third quarter, but H-F ran off nine unanswered points to take a 38-25 lead.
What did Laketa tell his players during a timeout that preceded the run?
”I just told them that I was going to go out there and play,” Laketa said.
Wilson finished with 25 points and 10 rebounds and Ridgway added 11 points. Dick Seidel, H-F`s 6-5 center, had 14 points and eight rebounds in his battle with James Hamby, Elgin`s 6-11 senior center. The De Paul-bound Hamby had 12 points and five rebounds.
”We weren`t really intimidated by him,” said Wilson, who scored most of his points on jumpers from the baseline. ”I wasn`t hesitating to take my shots. We`ve been looking forward to this game for a long time.”
”The last three years I went down there just to watch,” Ridgway said.
”I always knew I`d love to be down there playing, but I never thought I would be.”
Sophomores Mark Baugh and Tim Moritz had 14 and 11 points for Elgin, respectively.
