Rich South coach: 'I should've sat him'

Scot Ritter has a trace of Kankakee County in his voice, a bit of country hard-ass no doubt forged in part under the blast-furnace coaching of Bradley-Bourbonnais High School hoops legend Vern Sloan.

"Man, I hated my high school coach," Ritter said of Sloan, who went 287-172 with eight regional titles from 1984-2001 at the school. "But I did exactly what he said."

Ritter, now the 39-year-old, seventh-year basketball coach at Rich South, revealed his obedience with fierce pride, which made it all the more disarming when his shoulders slumped at the mention of Crandall Head.

"What do you do when a kid's not coachable?" he said. "You sit him," Ritter said. "Then, when you hear all these rumors, hear about him leaving, then I was in a Catch-22. Do I sit him and play a kid who doesn't give me the best chance to win and possibly lose him to transfer because I'm sitting him because he's not doing the right thing? Or do I play him and try and hope that the willingness to win and compete will take over and maybe he'll turn it around?"

Head, a SouthtownStar All-Area player as a sophomore at Rich South, now is a junior at Crane High School on Chicago's West Side, after transferring during the summer with his older brother Jeremy.

By that measure, Ritter didn't make the right choice. Though there are some who would argue otherwise, among them IHSA executive director Marty Hickman.

"If the standard a coach has to live up to is you've got to make this guy happy, then I'd wish that kid well as he moved on," Hickman said.

With Head, they were supposed to move up.

After the Stars won a regional title during Head's freshman year, they stumbled last season, going 14-11 and losing in the regional semis.

"I'm a very intense, demanding coach," Ritter said. "His freshman year ... we were a machine. But we had leadership; we had kids buy in, and they were coachable. You've got to have those three things nowadays.

"When I look back on (last) season, what I regret, what the mistake was, I should've just sat him - because of his attitude, because of his lack of effort."

Head's stepfather, Bo Delaney, agreed.

"I met with coach Ritter during the middle of the season, I think," said Delaney, the varsity coach at Manley High School from 1998-2005. "I told him that he's too easy on Crandall. He should have treated Crandall like he treated everybody else."

Of course, Head wasn't like everybody else. He was a University of Illinois-bound sophomore being courted as a potential transfer by several Chicago-area prep coaches.

"You can't blame Crandall for being 15 years old," Ritter said. "I've often thought about it. What would I do if I was 15, I had all these schools calling me, writing me - you probably couldn't get my head through the door, you know? I don't blame Crandall."

On that, Delaney agreed.

"It was the coach's fault," he said.

The coach has learned. Should another major college prospect come his way, Ritter has a different plan.

"I'll sit him when he doesn't play as hard as he's expected to," he said.