Trivia questions for you…
What team did not win their District but still went to State?
What team lost a total of 3 games in during the State series but took 2nd in State?
The answer to both questions is the 1912 Galesburg basketball team.
Galesburg High School’s boys basketball team finished 1911-1912 season with a 14-5 record and finished in second place at the State Tourney at Peoria.
Captain was Gordon Bridge. The other starters were Herbert Pihl, Eric Erickson, John Holliday, and Fred Phillips. Pihl, Erickson, and Phillips were only juniors. Coming off the bench were two sophomores, Lawrence Ingersoll and Byron Scott.
At this time, the tourney was set up with 6 districts though out the state. Today the tourney is set up using terms like “regionals” and “sectionals”, but these are just schools randomly assigned by the IHSA.
In 1912, there were 6 areas drawn on the map to be the boundaries of the six districts. If a school fell into that “district”, they played in that district tourney. It might be that one district could have a dozen teams and another only 4-5 at this time.
The districts were labeled as North, Northwest, West, Central, East, and South. Galesburg was on the border of the Northwest district. Abingdon was in the West district. Galesburg lost in the District championship to Mt. Carroll.
It was determined that Mt. Carroll would not to go to State because one of their players had dropped out of high school right after the tourney. As District runner-up, Galesburg went.
The State Tourney format was unusual with only 6 teams advancing to State. The first round, labeled the “quarterfinals” was simply the six teams being paired up to play. So the first round played on Friday looked like this:
(North) Batavia vs (West) Canton
(South) Granite City vs (East) Hillsboro
(Central) Decatur vs (Northwest) Galesburg
Batavia, Granite City, and Decatur all advanced to play in the semi-finals. The fourth team in the semi-finals was determined by having the three losers play in a “Consolation bracket” with the winner going into the semi-finals.
Because they had played in the first two games and had more time to rest, Hillsboro and Canton squared off on Friday night in the first game of the consolation bracket. Hillsboro edged Canton. That meant Hillsboro would play Galesburg on Saturday morning to determine who would advance to the semi-finals to play Decatur. Galesburg defeated Hillsboro 33-27 to advance back into the championship bracket to play Decatur a second time.
Galesburg had lost to Decatur on Friday afternoon 27-26, but beat Decatur’s on Saturday afternoon 36-23.
Playing their fourth game in two days, Galesburg lost to Batavia 28-25 in the 1912 State Championship game.
Galesburg’s leading scorers in the tourney were Pihl 34, Ingersoll 28, Erickson 26, and Bridge 21.
Fred Phillips, Galesburg’s center scored only 2 points but according to reports may have been one the most valuable players. The reason was that after every basket, there was a center jump. According to the reports, Phillips was tall, could jump and got most every tip. So Galesburg had more possessions than the other team. Imagine Galesburg scores, jump it up, Galesburg gets the tip, and they get another turn on offense.
Eric Erickson (Junior) was selected first team All-Tourney. Herbert Pihl (Junior) and Lawrence Ingersoll (soph- off the bench) were second team All-Tourney, This was a good sign for the 1913 Galesburg team.
The coach was T.W. Callihan. He would take one year off- the 1913 season then comeback.
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