Published: March 19, 2015
West Bend East: 1995
By NICHOLAS DETTMANN
Daily News
Going into the 1994-95 boys basketball season, West Bend
East believed it had a good team, a great team. Then the Suns lost the first
game of the season. Uh-oh.
“That was an awakening for them,” said Leroy Young, the
Suns’ coach at the time.
The team was still good. The only difference after losing
that game to Plymouth was just enough doubt lingered to make the Suns question
how good they really were. That was good and bad. In this case, it was good.
“They were good athletes,” Young said. “They played more
than one sport, but their first love was basketball.”
Toward the end of the regular season, the Suns won at
Milwaukee Hamilton.
Afterward Hamilton’s coach, Jim Jones, walked into East’s
locker room and told them to keep playing the way they were and they’ll be in
Madison for the state tournament.
“It was a nice thing to say to the kids,” said Bob
Liebetrau, an assistant for the Suns at the time.
The Suns got confidence again and rode it all the way to the
state tournament.
“They were basketball junkies,” Liebetrau said. “They just
loved playing basketball and got along together. That was special and they were
good players.”
The 1994-95 Suns are the only boys basketball team from West
Bend to ever advance to the state tournament.
In 1984, the Suns’ girls basketball team advanced to state
and won it all.
“Knowing we were the first boys team in the history of West
Bend (to get to state), that meant the most because of all the years in
basketball, this is not a basketball town,” Liebetrau said. “We kind of defied
the odds.”
One of the marquee victories of the season was over
Milwaukee Marquette, a program viewed as a measuring stick in the 1990s. The
Suns won that game at home.
Later, East beat Hamilton.
“We realized maybe we were pretty good,” Liebetrau said. “We
kept playing and kept getting better and better.”
East won the regional final, 68-43, over Menomonee Falls. In
the sectional, East beat Sussex Hamilton (61-52) and Homestead (65-59) to
advance to state.
The Suns faced Milwaukee Rufus King in the state
quarterfinal. The Generals were the top-ranked team in the state and proved it,
beating East, 67-35.
“We had no answer for their quickness,” Liebetrau said.
“They were awfully good.”
“We ran into a buzz-saw with Milwaukee King,” Young said.
“We played the first game on Thursday at 1:30 in the afternoon. It was a shock
to the boys. But it was a great experience and we had a lot of fun with it.”
King went on to beat Milwaukee Technical and Watertown to
win the state championship.
That’s right. Watertown.
The Wisconsin Little Ten Conference advanced two teams to
the state tournament that season.
“That was pretty unusual back then,” Liebetrau said.
The Suns finished conference undefeated that season (14-0),
while Watertown was 12-2. The two losses? East.
One of those was at the end of the regular season. If East
won, it’d win the WLT outright. If Watertown won, it’d be a split WLT champion.
“People came out to watch us play all year,” Young said.
Young called the team “The Iron Five.”
They were called that because he only played five or six
players in most games. There were only nine players on the roster.
The starting-five was Mark Thompson, Adam Falkner, Ben
Zukowski, Paul Luedtke and Sam Blahnik. The top bench player was Nate Forcey.
Thompson, Falkner, Zukowski and Luedtke were All-WLT
selections that season. Thompson was the conference’s Player of the Year. Of
the five starters, three averaged double figures in scoring.
They were a team that liked to run the floor and press on
defense. Zukowski was one of the Suns’ top defensive players.
Thompson and Falkner each went on to play college basketball
in Minnesota.
However, the Suns were capable of slowing the tempo and
playing whatever pace the opponent was giving them.
This group went 40-8 in two seasons (1993-94 and 1994-95).
That is the best twoyear stretch in school history.
“It was very enjoyable to coach those players,” Young said.
“Defensively, they took a lot of pride,” he added. “They
liked to run when they could. They made the game more exciting.”
They were a selfless team, too.
“They were all good kids and coachable kids,” Liebetrau
said. “If you told them, they’d do it.
“They were also talented.”
Young went 327-288 in 29 seasons as the Suns’ coach
(1975-2004), winning seven conference championships. In the 1987-88 and 1994-95
seasons, the Suns were undefeated.
Three times the Suns won 21 games under Young — 1987-88,
1994-95 and 1999-2000.
Young was inducted into the Wisconsin Basketball Coaches
Association Hall of Fame in 2006.
“I had a great coaching staff,” Young said. “The parents
were really good too. I really enjoyed it.”
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