Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Anatomy of a Basketball Town
Chapter 2. Prince of Peoria
Chapter 3. Mayor of the South Side
Chapter 4. Legends, Titles, and University of Illinois Pipeline
Chapter 5. How the Seeds of Struggle Were Planted
Chapter 6. Tragedy of Mud
Chapter 7. Finding Oscar Mack
Chapter 8. First Family of Peoria Central
Chapter 9. Shaun Livingston and the Burden of Expectations
Interviews
Index
Jeff Karzen is a sportswriter who has covered basketball recruiting for twenty years. He is the author of Homer: The Small-Town Baseball Odyssey.
"Author Jeff Karzen has captured the spirit — the drama and the fun
— of the River City during one of its great roundball runs. Now the
legacies come to life through this incredibly well-sourced book
that leaps past the scores and stats. It plunges into the inside
tracks of some of the back stories intertwined in the high school
roots that led to some historic hoops from the late 1980s to well
into the 21st century." --Community Word
“You can’t tell the story of basketball in Illinois without telling
the story of Peoria basketball. Jeff Karzen’s history is full of
colorful characters, with deep backstories of their own, and the
book does a terrific job of both uncovering these stories and
telling them in an entertaining fashion. Heading into this book, I
knew a little about Peoria basketball. Now I feel connected to
it.”--Will Leitch, author of How Lucky: A Novel
“It's hard to explain how dominant Peoria basketball came to be
during that period in the 1990s and 2000s. With a population around
200,000, Peoria produced one of the most overpowering high school
basketball teams in U.S. history--and Manual High was not the
city's only elite team. Once you read about the manic competition
that surrounded former star player Tom Wilson's transfer from one
school to another, you'll be hooked through to the final chapter
about the often heartbreaking but ultimately triumphant story of
NBA champion Shaun Livingston. The idea for this book was
wonderful, but the execution beats it by double-digits.”--Mike
DeCourcy, senior writer, The Sporting News
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