Rockford area's 10 greatest high school basketball coaches of all time

Earlier this year, toward the end of the football season, we introduced you to our list of the Rockford area's greatest high school football coaches of all time.

Now, it's time for basketball.

Here's our ranked list of the 10 greatest coaches to ever lead Rockford-area boys or girls basketball teams.

10) Nicole Brinker

Brinker started out at Forreston, finishing 175-63 with a pair of sectional titles. She then moved on to her alma mater in Eastland, where she led the Cougars to their first state title in 2020, plus a Class 1A runner-up finish the year before. The COVID year cost her a chance at a third straight berth in the state title game; the Cougars were 16-1 in 2021, losing only to No. 1-ranked Amboy and handing both Amboy and Stockton their lone defeats in that truncated season. Brinker won at least 20 games in 12 of her first 13 seasons as a coach and is 372-116 for her career, 175-63 at Forreston and 197-53 (and counting) at Eastland.

More: Rockford''s all-time greatest football coaches

9) Eric Yerly

Yerly is 294-89 (and counting) in his 13th year at Byron. He coached the Tigers to back-to-back Class 2A state titles in 2016 and 2017 and a state runner-up finish last year. Those 2016 and 2017 teams are the only Rockford-area girls basketball teams to ever win state in a class higher than 1A. Yerly is also a long-time assistant on Byron’s football team that has reached the Class 3A state title game four times in the last five seasons, winning twice.

8) Alex Saudargas

Saudargas coached Rockford West to back-to-back state titles with identical 28-1 records in the old one-class state tournament in 1955 and 1956. Saudargas finished with a 435-198 record in 26 seasons, winning 10 sectional titles and reaching the state tournament five times. He was a charter member of the Illinois Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame. Saudargas also has some renown for three other sports. He wrestled and played football at NIU, where he was an all-decade two-way guard for the football team in the 1930s and was inducted into NIU’s Hall of Fame in 1985. He was also the tennis coach at West when Dan Wikse won the only state title by any NIC-10 player in history in 1965.

7) John Nolan, Byron

Nolan is the coach who originally built Byron into a girls basketball power. He went 1-17 in his first year and started with three consecutive losing seasons. He led Byron to its first-ever winning season in 1984, going 14-10. Two years later, they won 20 games for the first time and the Tigers’ first regional and sectional titles. He went on to win 17 regional titles and six sectional titles. His teams reached state three times, finishing third in Class A in 1996. He was 545-222 in 28 years at Byron before retiring in 2008 and ranks 25th in state history in wins.

6) Bryan Ott

Ott has led Auburn to its only five NIC-10 boys titles since the 1970s. He not only lifted Auburn, he changed the NIC-10, helping the league become much more balanced after Boylan had won 22 conference titles in 27 years. Auburn hadn’t won a regional title in any sport except girls tennis for 14 years from the 1994-95 school year to 2007-08 before becoming an annual power in basketball. It wasn’t easy. Auburn was 27-105 the five years before Ott was hired. He started with seven consecutive losing seasons, but has won nine regional and five sectional titles and two state trophies since 2009. The Knights reached the Class 4A supersectional last year and are favored to win the NIC-10 this year. Ott is 435-283 in 25 years at Auburn.

More: How Randy Weibel changed Hononegah basketball

5) Randy Weibel

Weibel ranks 10th in state history with over 700 wins as a girls coach. He started out 181-113 at Mendota before becoming the NIC-10’s all-time winningest girls coach with more than 500 wins at Hononegah. Like a few other coaches on this list, he was a true innovator, relying heavily on the 3-pointer long before most girls — and even most college and pro men’s coaches — did. His daughter Courtney once held the national record for 3-pointers (her career mark of 471, set in 2007, is still the state record). His 2019 team finished third in the state in Class 4A. Freeport (four times) is the only other NIC-10 school to win a top-four state trophy in girls basketball.

4) Joe Murphy

Murphy could have been one of the area’s greatest girls basketball coaches. The Boylan grad was 109-29 in his first five years as a head coach, leading Winnebago to a regional championship every year, plus three sectional titles and trip to state in 1985. Instead, Murphy succeeded Carl Armato as Winnebago’s boys coach two years later. And is still there. At the time of this writing, Murphy is 752-291 as Winnebago’s boys coach, 15th all-time in the state. Add in his girls wins and his total of 861 wins (and counting) would be just 20 behind former Boylan boys coach Steve Goers for the most by any area coach in history. Murphy has coached ‘Bago to five state trophies, including three runner-up finishes, in Class A or 2A since 2004.

More: After 31 years, Steve Goers retires as Boylan basketball coach

3) Steve Goers

If this list only included what coaches did in high school, Steve Goers might be No. 1. He built the longest-lasting local dynasty in area history. At one point his Boylan teams won 22 NIC-10 titles in 27 years. In 31 years at Boylan, the Titans finished fourth in the state in Class AA three times and won 26 conference and 28 regional titles. He set state records with 17 sectional titles and 30 consecutive winning seasons. Twenty-six of his last 28 Boylan teams won at least 20 games. Goers, who coached briefly at Oswego, LaSalle-Peru and Harvard before landing at Boylan in 1981, had a career 881-264 record. He held the state record for boys basketball wins when he retired at age 68 and is still No. 3.

2) Adolph Rupp

Rupp went 66-21 in four years with Freeport. He led the Pretzels to a third-place finish in state in 1929. In his final year, he went 20-4 before being hired in 1930 to be the head coach at Kentucky, where he built the Wildcats into a dynasty and won a then-record 876 games as well as four NCAA titles in 41 seasons.

As a man, Rupp left a complicated legacy. He never had a Black player at Kentucky until his 40th season. A group of faculty members tried to have Rupp’s name removed from Kentucky’s basketball arena three years ago, saying “the name stands for racism and exclusion.” But he did coach two Black players long before that. William Moseley played on Rupp’s first two Freeport teams in 1927 and 1928. And UCLA’s Don Barksdale played for Rupp in 1948 when he was the first Black player to ever make the U.S. Olympic team.

Strictly as a basketball coach, though, Rupp’s greatness is undeniable. He coached that 1948 Olympic team to the gold medal, winning every game by at least 25 points. He was one of the first coaches to emphasize the fast break and was an early innovator of the set offense. And while, like Bob Knight, his teams played strictly man-to-man defense for most of his career, Rupp also became one of the first coaches to experiment with a 1-3-1 zone trap and used that at times for the last seven years of his career.

1) Dolph Stanley

Stanley coached local teams Auburn, Boylan and Keith Country Day. He finished 705-313 and ranks 23rd in the state in career wins. He was Auburn’s first basketball coach, going 161-93 in 10 years from 1961-70. His first year at Boylan was the first year the Titans reached state, in 1971. Stanley was inducted into the Illinois Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame in 1973. That Boylan trip to state made him the only coach to lead five different schools to the state tourney. He led Equality to state in 1934, Mt. Pulaski in 1936, Taylorville in 1940 and 1944, Auburn in 1962 and 1963 and Boylan in 1971. The only school that he didn’t lead to state was Rockford Keith, where he went 90-43. His 1944 Taylorville team was the first Illinois state champion to go undefeated (45-0). The high school gyms at both Auburn and Taylorville are named after Staley.

In 1990, the Chicago Tribune picked Stanley as the greatest high school coach in Illinois history. And like our No. 1 pick, Stanley also proved his greatness at the college level. Between Taylorville and Auburn, he had perhaps his greatest success at Beloit College. He was 238-57 in 12 seasons at Beloit College from 1945-57. That included six straight Midwest Conference titles. His 1951 team may have been the greatest small-college team in history. Featuring future Olympic gold medalist Ron Bontemps, future Michigan and Iowa State coach Johnny Orr and future Milwaukee Bucks GM John Erickson, Beloit, with only 1,000 students, was invited to the NIT, which was at least as prestigious as the NCAA tourney at the time. That team smashed Beloit’s field house scoring record with a 141-53 win over Cornell (Iowa) and the Chicago Stadium record with a 94-60 win over Ray Meyer’s DePaul Blue Demons.

Stanley was an early innovator in using a full-court press. John Erickson, a former Wisconsin Badgers coach who played for Stanley at Beloit, told the Madison State Journal an anecdote about how much Stanley’s press flustered other teams.

"I remember once we were really killing the other team and there was a timeout and the coach came up the floor and he had tears in his eyes," Erickson told the State Journal in 2012. "He said to Dolph, ‘You've got to let us get the ball to halfcourt. I've never seen this before. I don't know what you call it, but we can't get the ball up to midcourt.' And Dolph said, ‘Well, you're going to have to learn to do that I guess.' “

A few others

Other notable coaches include: Mike Miller won more than 500 games at Hononegah, Guilford and Galesburg and led Guilford in 1993 and Galesburg in 1998 to Class AA state runner-up finishes. … current Rockford Lutheran coaches Tom Guse (302-125 with three state trophies with the boys) and Joni Carlson (410-180 with the girls). … Jim Laude was 457-191 at Rockford High and East and won the 1939 state title. … Judy Weber-Krause was 529-311 over three different stretches as Winnebago’s girls coach. … Mike Winters won seven conference, eight regional and four sectional titles at five area schools, going 382-204 at Oregon, Jefferson, Rock Falls, Boylan and Harlem before retiring at age 48 last year. … Jan Freheit started 10-56 at Christian Life then went 206-82 the rest of the way in 14 years as a girls basketball coach. … Brian Benning was 101-60 at Orangeville with one trip to state in Class A boys and 202-69 at Dakota. … Tony Dunlap was 386-168 in 19 years at Eastland with two state fourth-place finishes in Class 1A boys. … Erik Kudronowicz is 254-241 at one of the smallest public schools in the state at Scales Mound with a chance to earn his third straight state trophy this year (the Hornets are currently 11-1 and ranked No. 5). … Freeport girls coach Fred Klipp was 441-200 with two third-place finishes in Class AA. … Ron Norman was 195-110 and won a regional title in all 12 of his years as Freeport’s boys coach from 1956-67. … Paul Perrone is the all-time winningest girls coach at both Boylan and Harlem with a career 504-262 record. ... Russ Zick is 46th in state history with 597 boys wins, including a 238-171 record in 14 years at Rochelle with six of the school's seven regional titles since 1985.

Contact: mtrowbridge@rrstar.com, @matttrowbridge or 815-987-1383. Matt Trowbridge has covered sports for the Rockford Register Star for over 30 years, after previous stints in North Dakota, Delaware, Vermont and Iowa City.

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: A look back on Rockford's 10 greatest basketball coaches