The first game played at SFC, when it was opened as Assembly Hall, was Mar. 2, 1963. The Illini had won the Big Ten Title that year with the described team members above, but played all their games at Huff. The first game played in SFC was the opening game of the Illinois State High School tournament. That event ended as one of the most historic ever played as #1 Centralia, leading by a point over Carver, had the ball stolen in the last 20 seconds by Carver's Anthony Smedley, a seldom used bench player, from the Orphans Consensus All-Stater Herb Williams, on an inbound pass after a time out at the Carver end. The ball went to Williams because he was an elite leaper at 6'3". But Smedley made a back door steal, knocking the ball away to the Carver baseline where he picked it up and nailed a 10 ft. jumper, IIRC, to give Carver a one point lead. Centralia had the ball with about 8 seconds left but did not score.
An epic game that ended an epic event. Being there for all the games, it will always be vividly remembered in my feeble mind. The place was packed to the rafters with every seat filled and there had to be over 17000 present. The atmosphere was electric and nothing disappointed.
So you are correct, your Dad got Dave Downey's autograph in '64 after he graduated and all the other's came back from that B1G championship team to play in the Assembly Hall. In fact, I was in Bloomington, Indiana on the day the Illini won that 63 title. A teammate of mine had signed with the Hoosiers and he invited me to the season's final game...OSU and Gary Bradds taking on a legendary Hoosier team of the Van Arsdale twins, Tom Bolyard, Jon McGlocklin, and Jimmy Rayl. All the Hoosiers were 6'5" except for the 6'2" Rayl....and they would all shoot it from anywhere at anytime, especially Rayl. The Hoosiers ecked out an 87-85 OT victory which was necessary to give the Illini, who squeaked out a win that day over Iowa 73-69, the title.
Sadly, that Illini season ended with the all too familiar loss to the Loyola Ramblers in the second round of the NCAA tournament.
Interestingly enough, the Hoosiers and the Illini, per usual, had two great battles that year as the Illini squeaked by IU in Champaign on a cold Feb. 4th evening by a 104-101 score while the Hoosiers managed to return the favor 12 days later with a Sat. afternoon victory...103-100. Not enough basketballs to go around and defense certainly was a different cat back then.
Another interesting fact is the the Illini were ranked #8 in the AP pre-season poll.....and that is exactly where they finished. Oddly, they won their first 7 games before losing to un-ranked Notre Dame on New Year's Eve. While on their 7 game opening streak, they dropped to #10 in the Dec. 10th poll before rising as high as #3 in 3 Jan. polls.
Regardless, the SFC (always the University of Illinois Assembly Hall to me) is still studied for its unique architecture and is an even today one of the most storied and exciting venues for college basketball....and I hope will prove its worth once again as the home of the IHSA state championship basketball tournament.
John Egan was Loyola's 5'10" Irish Catholic starting point guard from the South Side.