Here are 10 fearless forecasts for the 2023-24 high school basketball season.
De La Salle will win its first sectional title in over 40 years.
There have been a lot of very good De La Salle teams since coach Jerry Tokars last led the Meteors to a sectional championship in 1983.
Seventeen different De La Salle teams have captured regional championships since 1983. But there hasn’t been a single one of those 17 teams to claim a sectional title and play in a super-sectional.
Current coach Gary DeCesare has led the Meteors to back-to-back regional titles, and last year’s team was a No. 1 seed. But Fenwick upset De La Salle in the sectional semifinals.
But that long streak of sectional losses ends this March. There is endless size and length, senior leaders and a host of impressive young players to help get DeCesare’s Meteors over the hump. Plus, the team that has won this sectional each of the past two seasons — St. Ignatius — has moved up to Class 4A this season.
The most impactful transfer in the state not named Morez Johnson will be Lathan Sommerville.
There were three top-five senior prospects in the state, all headed to the Big Ten next year, who have moved schools for their final year of high school: Morez Johnson to Thornton, Lathan Sommerville to Peoria Richwoods and Cooper Koch to Metamora.
Bryce Heard, arguably the top junior prospect, moved back from a prep school and has helped boost Homewood-Flossmoor toward the top of the rankings.
And there were plenty of other top players who moved to new schools, so there is going to be no shortage of high-impact transfers across the state.
Yes, Johnson’s impact as the state’s top-ranked prospect on a team that struggled a year ago is going to be the biggest. But Sommerville’s move back to Peoria will also be gigantic.
Sommerville is a multi-faceted 6-10 big man who can beat you in several ways with his size around the basket and his skill away from it. The Rutgers recruit joins a team that won 25 games last season and returns its top scorer, guard Tavie Smith (18.2 ppg).
Richwoods reached a sectional championship game last season, losing to … Metamora.
Both will be back again with their future Big Ten players impacting the potential rematch.
Gabe Sularski will be the biggest breakout player in the sophomore class
This is almost cheating.
Considering the 6-6 Benet Academy sophomore has already broken out without playing a varsity game yet — Sularski has double-digit high-major offers in the offseason — this seems like a layup. But facts are facts.
Sularski has grown considerably since a year ago, even since his breakout performance this past June during the high school live periods. He’s grown physically and improved his efficiency with his perimeter jumper. He’s the best player on a team that will again be among the best in the Chicago area.
Thornton reclaims its throne in Southland
The Wildcats haven’t won a conference title since the 2019-2020 season. For most programs that’s not a big deal. But for proud, tradition-rich Thornton basketball, that’s quite a stretch.
Whether it was in the Southland Conference or in the old Southwest Suburban Red or SICA East, Thornton won 10 conference championships over 13 years from 2007-08 to 2019-20 but has been title-less in conference play the past three seasons.
Even though the two-time defending champ Bloom is highly ranked and stacked again — and both Kankakee and Rich Twp. are on the cusp of being top 25 teams — Thornton, star Morez Johnson and a revamped roster wins the Southland Conference.
York will have the biggest turnaround season of any team.
The Dukes didn’t even crack the top half of the loaded West Suburban Silver last year, finishing 3-9 overall. They nearly lost 20 games, finishing 13-18.
But coach Mike Dunn’s team showed enough competitiveness last year — and upside this past summer — to believe a complete turnaround is on the horizon.
Is York ready to challenge highly-ranked Downers Grove North for the top spot in the league? Well … Baby steps first. But the Dukes are the prime challenger.
AJ Levine, an unheralded scoring point guard, is finally starting to get the attention he deserves. He recently committed to Penn and has received plenty of preseason accolades. Plus, York has yet another highly undervalued player ready to shine: 6-6 senior wing Kyle Waltz. Watch for Waltz, who averaged just under 10 points a game last season, to burst on the scene this season.
York can certainly flirt with 20 wins and put themselves in position — if sectional assignments remain the same — for a top-four seed, along with Benet, Lake Park, Naperville North, Metea Valley, Batavia and Wheaton South.
Lane wins its first regional championship
Even with a Division I caliber player leading the way for a senior-dominated team that’s ranked in the preseason, a regional title is far from a gimme.
For starters, since the regional format began in Illinois high school basketball, Lane has never won one. That’s quite a mental hurdle to get over.
This was also a .500 team just one year ago and plays in an always-rugged sectional field where regional titles are still a grind to win. This is a sectional where if it remains the same as a year ago, it will include Downers Grove North, Young, Curie — and possibly St. Ignatius.
But that fifth spot appears to be wide open, and it’s the call here that the Shaheed Soledo-led Champions (yes, that is Lane’s nickname) find a way to claim their first-ever regional title.
Wauconda wins its first sectional championship
Whoa. Now there’s a big, bold forecast.
Back in 2019-20, Covid wiped out Wauconda’s first-ever sectional championship game appearance as the pandemic ended the season abruptly.
The 2021-22 season saw the Bulldogs win 25 games and a regional title before losing in the sectional semifinals.
Those were the only two sectional appearances in Wauconda history.
The combination of a go-to player in 6-4 guard Braeden Carlson, who averaged over 20 points a game last season, a senior-dominated team with great size and an always winnable Class 3A sectional, allows Wauconda to make some program history in March.
While Carlson, a Division I recruit headed to Mercer, is a four-year varsity performer and fresh off breaking the school’s single-season scoring record, coach Ty Weidner has a surplus of players with multiple years of varsity experience, including 6-5 Tyler Tylka, the team leader in rebounds, blocks and assists, and shooter Cayden Mudd.
There will be a set of teams in one Class 3A sectional quietly bummed out when the IHSA releases its sectional assignments in a few weeks.
Where does the IHSA send the defending Class 2A state champs, a team that is highly ranked, returns the bulk of its team, and is moving up to Class 3A this season?
DePaul Prep will be a wild card in the Class 3A field after rolling to a 2A state championship last year. Whatever sectional coach Tom Kleinschmidt’s team is added to will immediately alter the postseason hopes for a team or two come state tournament time.
Class 3A sectionals are not generally stacked with depth. DePaul could be a team that vaults to the top of a sectional and pushes everyone down a step on the seeding ladder.
But where will DePaul, located on the North Side of Chicago, be sent?
Schurz and Lake View, schools that are just two miles in different directions from DePaul, were both 3A schools last year. They were sent south — to the De La Salle Sectional. That’s where fellow Chicago Catholic League foes of DePaul, like Fenwick and De La Salle, played last year with St. Ignatius, which is now a Class 4A school. Using previous IHSA assignments as a guide, this makes sense.
However, St. Patrick is just four miles straight west of DePaul and was sent to the Grayslake Central Sectional last year, where it was matched up with suburban schools like Lake Forest, Niles Notre Dame and St. Viator. Could the IHSA send DePaul in that direction?
Or does the IHSA mix it all up in Class 3A?
Right now there are some odd geographical fits when it comes to Class 3A sectional hosts and the schools that are included. Remember, Simeon, Hyde Park, St. Laurence and Mount Carmel, all South Side schools in the city, played a sectional in Glen Ellyn at Glenbard South last March.
The Top 10 teams that won’t stay there: Simeon and St. Ignatius
Now here is some bulletin board material for the Wolverines and Wolfpack, ranked No. 9 and No. 10, respectively, in the Super 25 preseason rankings.
Cut this out. Pin it up in the locker room. And send the disrespect messages this way when the season concludes.
Both Simeon and St. Ignatius are very good, teams that should be ranked and talked about. But there is so much going against each of them in 2023-24, starting with the fact they are both moving up from Class 3A to Class 4A. Those regional and sectional championships at the end of the year are going to be a lot more difficult to come by.
Coach Matt Monroe has led St. Ignatius to heights the program has never seen before, finishing among the top four teams in Class 3A in each of the past two seasons. However, the obstacles in maintaining that level of success may prove to be too cumbersome.
For starters, the Chicago Catholic League is an absolute monster this season; the losses are inevitable with the schedule the Wolfpack will play within the league and in non-conference play. In addition, when state tournament time rolls around, the sectional St. Ignatius will likely be playing in will look a whole lot different than a year ago.
Last year at this time St. Ignatius was an overwhelming future pick to be playing in Champaign. And to its credit, Iggy lived up to it. But the Wolfpack played Elmwood Park, Perspectives/IIT Math & Science, Westinghouse, Fenwick and Grayslake Central on its road to Champaign.
Also, there is no denying the fact the loss of top-level talent over the past two years to graduation, including AJ Redd, Kolby Gilles, Richard Barron and Jackson Kotecki, is impossible to ignore and so difficult to replace.
Yes, junior guard Phoenix Gill has a chance to be special, a player capable of carrying this team. A healthy Reggie Ray is huge. But time will tell if the supporting cast can develop and emerge to the point where this team can stay in the top 10 when the season concludes.
Simeon, meanwhile, lost all five starters and six of its top seven players from last year’s state runner-up team. And it’s not as if Simeon’s younger classes were loaded. And, oh, they lost the most successful coach in state history who was running the ship for the past two decades.
Fortunately, coach Tim Flowers was able to secure a couple of very talented transfers in Dekwon Brown from Peoria and sophomore Andre Tyler from St. Rita.
The guess here is the IHSA will send St. Ignatius west, where a sectional would include Cure, Young and Downers Grove North, and Simeon will head south with Kenwood, Homewood-Flossmoor, Bloom, Marist and Brother Rice. That’s some tough sledding for both to maintain a top-10 ranking at the end of the season.
The 50th anniversary of the Big Dipper this December will mark the re-emergence of this once-great tournament.
The Big Dipper, the venerable holiday tournament in the south suburbs, was once a must-see event on the high school calendar. But in recent years the tournament has lost nearly all of its luster.
That will change in 2023.
The tournament has Thornton and Homewood-Flossmoor, teams ranked No. 2 and No. 4, respectively, in the preseason Super 25 rankings. The talent on those two rosters, headed by Illinois recruit Morez Johnson of Thornton, will attract and excite fans.
But the tournament also boasts perennial power Hillcrest, Hyde Park and Jurrell Baldwin, one of the top unsigned seniors in the state, intriguing teams in Westinghouse, Eisenhower, Thornwood and Evergreen Park, and the host school, Rich Twp. with exciting sophomore Jamson Coulter.
There is also an out-of-state team from across the border in Indiana, Bishop Noll in Hammond, which is led by former Illinois prep player Jaedin Reyna, who began his career at St. Rita. Reyna is now a senior and among the top players in the state of Indiana.
That mix of teams and talent elevates this tournament — virtually overnight — to one of the top five holiday tournaments in the state. That’s a far cry from where this tournament has been in recent years.
The south suburbs have been aching for a little return to glory for this tournament, and it’s going to get it this December.
