Who’s the greatest scorer in Monroe County Region boys basketball history?

Which coach has the most victories?

Okay, those answers might be easy. State Line Christian’s Todd Weber (2,370 points) and SMCC’s Ray Lauwers (587 wins) are well-known in local prep basketball circles.

But, do you know which prep basketball player was credited with a scoring championship, then the next day it was taken away when The Evening News ran a correction?

How about a game where one Region team had 52 turnovers? Or, do you remember a six-overtime game between Monroe Catholic Central and Tecumseh?

Those stories and more have been collected in one, 96-page, glossy-book. I have been working on the book for about 10 years, gathering materials and collecting information while doing other projects. Now, it has been put it into one reference guide.

The book is now on sale for $15 at the newspaper office, 20 W. First St. They can also be ordered online by visiting www.monroenews.com and clicking on the ad at the top of the sports page.

Sections include:

– Team by team pages, including win-loss records and coaches of every Region team for each year they have had boys basketball. Some of the data dates back to the 1928 season.

– Player section, including lists of 1,000 point scorers, annual scoring champions, Players of the Year and All-State selections.

– Coaching section, detailing the records of all Region boys coaches, from Jeff Adduci to Gene Zimmer.

– Honor teams – lists of every All-Region team since The Evening News began choosing a team in 1974.

There are a collection of columns written by sports editors Ron Montri and Bill Brenton, in which they chose the best players and teams in Region history, plus nearly 100 photographs of some of the greatest Region basketball stars ever, from Norm Weyher (Dundee) to Ted Tibbetts (Summerfield) to Rosie Barnes (Monroe) to Stan Joplin (Milan).

And, there are numerous stories, from Milan’s state championship to of 1948 to Dundee’s semifinal run in 1988. Bedford’s high-scoring 1969-70 team is featured, as is a dozen of the most unlikely upsets and last-second victories in local boys’ basketball history, including Monroe’s 1964 win over the Detroit Public School League champs.

It was a ton of fun putting the book together. I’d love to hear from people who have seen it. I will be using this blog as a way to talk about prep basketball in the Region, detail some new historical items I find as well as just talk about Region basketball history.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 20th, 2007 at 11:57 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.