Munster-Merrillville promises to excite

Updated: March 23, 2011 9:32AM

There will be plenty of quality high school basketball games Saturday.

Always are this time of year.

Valparaiso travels to Bishop Noll for the first time in ages to play the Warriors, ranked fourth in Class 2A. Whitney Young, one of the top teams in Chicago, plays at Bowman on the day the Eagles plan to honor their 2010 state championship team with a ring ceremony.

But those games - every game on the schedule, boys or girls - will just be background noise for the epic showdown between Munster and Merrillville at Merrillville.

It's No. 1-ranked Munster versus No. 2-ranked Merrillville.

Or No. 1-ranked Merrillville versus No. 2-ranked Munster.

Take your pick.

In just about every poll that matters in the state of Indiana, the Mustangs and Pirates, both undefeated, are ranked either first or second.

That game is all that really matters this weekend.

There are so many juicy angles with this story it's hard to know exactly where to start.

It's enough to make a region basketball fan skip to the game, no matter how much snow is on the ground or how cold it is outside.

How about this? Mike Hackett, the Munster coach, was an assistant for Jim East, the Merrillville coach, for 10 years before leaving the Pirates. He has built the Mustangs into a powerhouse program, but he once thought he'd be the guy coaching the Pirates when East retired.

Then there's the fact that this is a farewell season for East, a Hall-of-Fame coach who has been plying his trade for 43 years.

For sheer talent and quality, very few teams can match what the Mustangs and Pirates will bring to the gym. This is a once-in-a-half-century regular season matchup.

Froeble and Gary Roosevelt played as the top-ranked teams in 1965, according to Lew Wallace coach Renaldo Thomas.

And it's possible that the East Chicago Washington-East Chicago Roosevelt tilts in the late 1960s and early '70s (Roosevelt won state in 1970 and Washington in 1971) were as highly anticipated.

But East, who is 70 and has been coaching the Pirates since 1980, can't recall a No. 1 and a No. 2 team playing in the regular season, particularly two schools that are only 15 miles apart.

"Hasn't happened since I've been here," he said.

Joe Otis, the local basketball historian and the coach at Valparaiso, believes it is an anomaly.

"To go 15 games into the season and have both of them undefeated?" he said. "That is hard to do. I don't think that this has ever been done before - not even in the Indianapolis area that I can recall."

There is one potential problem with the undefeated part.

Both teams play on Friday. Merrillville plays Crown Point at home while Munster travels to Griffith.

East was reluctant to talk about the matchup because he plans on spending plenty of time this week working on the Bulldogs, a solid team in its own right that is about to be ranked fifth in the Post-Tribune's poll.

The game itself has presented its own set of special challenges for Merrillville administrators.

Janis Qualizza, the athletic director at Merrillville, sighed when asked about the unique issues she is facing for the event.

Qualizza had hoped that the gym would already be sold out by midweek.

But after an initial ticket-buying surge on Monday, th school had sold about 2,000 of the 3,000 available tickets by noon Tuesday. Four hundred tickets that had been allotted to Munster fans were gone Monday morning in a matter of hours.

Qualizza thinks the bad weather has put a damper on sales for now. She is certain the game will be sold out. She's just not sure when it will happen. Merrillville was clear from the beginning about not honoring any season passes from anyone, because they have to monitor the number of people in the gym. The gym holds 3,500, but they won't sell more than 3,000 tickets.

Qualizza has had to hire more security, order more food and worry about how the regulars - who are used to lounging around while watching their Pirates - are going to adjust to sitting hip-to-hip in the bleachers.

"It's a lot of work and a lot of planning," she said. "We want to leave no stone unturned."

It's the kind of work and planning that plenty of schools would die for.

And it's the kind of game that everybody is dying for - players, coaches, fans and sportswriters included.

"Why not?" East asked of having the two best teams in the state play on a blustery February night. "This is great for the region."

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