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Sad news- One of the greates prep players in the history of Illinois high school basketball has passed away. One-time All State player (in 1960) from McLeansboro, Illinois High School (now Hamilton County HS) Jerry Sloan died today at the age of 78. He was born and raised in the tiny farming community of Gobbler's Knob, Illinois, 15 miles south of McLeansboro. He went on to be a star at the University Evansville from 1962-1965, where he was a small school All American, and helped lead Evansville to the small college (now Division II) national championships in 1964 and 1965. He graduated from Evansville in 1965 and was selected 4th overall by the Baltimore Bullets. He played 1 season for the Bullets before being selected by the newly formed Chicago Bulls in the 1966 expansion draft, where he spent the final 10 seasons of his career. He then went on to a stellar coaching career with the Bulls and the Utah Jazz, and is now a member of the basketball Hall of Fame. He was also the first retired jersey in Bulls history.
Bio- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Sloan
One other notable bit of history... after a series of knee injuries, Sloan was forced to retire from playing for the Bulls in 1976. After retiring, in 1977 he accepted an offer to become head coach of his alma mater, the University of Evansville basketball team, which had just moved up to Division I level for the 1977-78 season. However, for reasons he never divulged, he resigned after only 5 days. Bobby Watson was hired instead as the coach that season. In one of the greatest tragedies in the history of college basketball, as the team was leaving the Evansville Regional Airport on December 13, 1977 to fly to Nashville International Airport to play the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders, their DC-3 prop-driven airplane crashed shortly after takeoff, and killed everyone aboard (26 players, coaches, staff and guests plus 3 crew members). One player, David Furr, who was injured, stayed home and was not on the flight, and thus was the only surviving member of the 1977-78 team. However, in another tragic twist, Furr was killed 2 weeks later in a car accident.
Jerry Sloan was hired as an assistant by the Bulls in 1978, and then became their head coach a year later in 1979. He coached 3 seasons with the Bulls, then 23 seasons with the Utah Jazz, resigning in 2011.
Jerry's son Brian Sloan was the 1984 Illinois Mr. Basketball and an All-State player himself, leading McLeansboro HS to an undefeated state championship that year in Class A (the smaller school class of the 2-class format that existed from 1972-2007). Brian Sloan went on to play for Bobby Knight at Indiana and won a national championship there in 1987.
Bio- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Sloan
One other notable bit of history... after a series of knee injuries, Sloan was forced to retire from playing for the Bulls in 1976. After retiring, in 1977 he accepted an offer to become head coach of his alma mater, the University of Evansville basketball team, which had just moved up to Division I level for the 1977-78 season. However, for reasons he never divulged, he resigned after only 5 days. Bobby Watson was hired instead as the coach that season. In one of the greatest tragedies in the history of college basketball, as the team was leaving the Evansville Regional Airport on December 13, 1977 to fly to Nashville International Airport to play the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders, their DC-3 prop-driven airplane crashed shortly after takeoff, and killed everyone aboard (26 players, coaches, staff and guests plus 3 crew members). One player, David Furr, who was injured, stayed home and was not on the flight, and thus was the only surviving member of the 1977-78 team. However, in another tragic twist, Furr was killed 2 weeks later in a car accident.
Jerry Sloan was hired as an assistant by the Bulls in 1978, and then became their head coach a year later in 1979. He coached 3 seasons with the Bulls, then 23 seasons with the Utah Jazz, resigning in 2011.
Jerry's son Brian Sloan was the 1984 Illinois Mr. Basketball and an All-State player himself, leading McLeansboro HS to an undefeated state championship that year in Class A (the smaller school class of the 2-class format that existed from 1972-2007). Brian Sloan went on to play for Bobby Knight at Indiana and won a national championship there in 1987.