Tournament Time: Du Quoin Nipped Marion In First-Ever Game of the Now 68-Year-Old Centralia Holiday Tourney
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Neither Bob Emling or Babe Hill remembers who scored the first basket, but the former Du Quoin High School basketball stars recall many other details of the Indians' first visit to the Centralia Holiday Tournament which this week is in its 68th season.
"If I guessed, I'd say it was either Norman Beard or Clyde Benson," Emling said. "They were the two best players on our team."
It's a minor detail in the historic event which happened to be the first game ever played in the Centralia meet which is the oldest consecutive-years holiday tournament in the state. Initiated in 1943, the meet's history includes more than 1,500 games.
The first: Du Quoin 39, Marion 35. Emling and Benson led Du Quoin's scoring with 13 points apiece.
The Indians defeated Flora, 34-24, in the quarter-finals before losing to eventual champion Taylorville club, 46-33. Du Quoin edged Johnston City, 50-47, to claim third-place.
Both Emling and Hill recalled many minor details of the tournament, but neither realized that the game was the first-ever played in the Centralia meet which actually was a replacement for the first mid-season high school tournament initiated at Paris in the mid-1920s. The Paris meet was discontinued in 1942 due to World War II restrictions, then resumed in 1947.
Emling recalled the water fights players became involved while overnighting at the Langenfeld Hotel in downtown Centralia.
"We got blamed for some things that players from other teams actually did," Emling said, "but I know we weren't allowed to stay there the next year."
Emling, who recalled perfectly that the Indians defeated Johnston City three times during the season and by one, three and 10 points, also recalled the names of four of Taylorville's five starters.
""We were ahead of Taylorville by five points with five minutes to go before Babe and Ralph Cutler fouled out," Emling said. "They were the first team to use the pick and roll, but we had scouted them, knew about it and stopped it."
Nevertheless, Taylorville later that season became the first team in Illinois to claim the state championship with an undefeated record.
Du Quoin, too, went on to enjoy a fine season and finished with a 25-5 record and conference championship before being defeated by Pinckneyville, 61-54, in the regional finals. The two teams had split regular-season games while the Indians' other losses were to Mt. Vernon, in overtime, and West Frankfort.
Benson was the team's leading scorer with 337 points while Emling finished with 318 ahead of Beard's 205. Others included Cutler (168), Hill (110), Bill Martin (81), Jack McDaniels (65), George Sims (43), Everett Beard (42), Don Willi (21) and "Cotton" Johnson (16).