Dec 29, 2019 10 min read

A few hours before Valentine’s Day 1979, the Immaculate Conception High School boys’ basketball team had its best chance in nearly a decade to upend city rival Wash High.

After making a furious rally to overtake the Prexies in the fourth quarter, the Comets saw its steady – often spectacular foul shooting – fail them and Wash High’s Butch Harton’s nearly half-court shot go through the hoop, sending IC to defeat and into the offseason.

Without a doubt, many Comets’ hearts were broken.

“Going back to that game, it was closely contested, back and forth,” said Doug Silbaugh, one of five junior starters on that IC team. “But (Harton) makes the game-winning shot from almost half court. It almost completely derailed us. We were knocked out of making the playoffs and they beat us again.

“When the season was over, our complete focus was on what we could do to go head-to-head with the guys at Wash High and win. Up to that point, there was no confirmation we could climb that hill.”

The first hints that maybe things were about to change came in the Burgettstown undergraduate tournament, where the Comets did beat the Prexies, Silbaugh remembered. It was a victory over Wash High’s summer league team at the YMCA.

While that was encouraging, it wasn’t the confirmation or the victory IC was looking for against its antagonist.

After the stunning loss in February 1979, Comets’ Coach Ray Natili was quoted in the Observer-Reporter that Wash High would “have to go an awful long way to beat us next year.”

Silbaugh admits the entire offseason was dedicated to beating Wash High.

“We saw how the schedule shaped up,” Silbaugh said. “Nobody poked, overlooked or discarded any team we were going to play. But there was no question, our minds were on Wash High and the dates we were scheduled to play them were circled. Those games held special meaning.

“There was no overlooking Chartiers-Houston or Burgettstown. But we measured ourselves by what we did against Wash High. There was a great deal of anticipation.”

Natili said despite the devastating loss, the Comets were poised to become a championship team the next season and were not going to let that opportunity slip away.

“That heartbreaker cost us the (section) championship,” Natili said. “We had to win our last seven games and only won six. I knew with everybody coming back, we had to be the ones (Wash High) was going to chase. We had a nice team, quick, good shooters coming back.”

Holiday cheer

Silbaugh was joined in the starting lineup by fellow seniors Ray Natili III – the top player in Washington County and one of the best in the WPIAL that season – sharpshooting Mark Maloy, and big men Kevin Gillespie and Rick Cain. The quintet were together a handful of years and the majority together since early grade school. Ken Westcott, transferred to IC from Wash High for his senior year and was a valuable sixth man for the Comets.

IC hosted its own holiday tournament at Washington & Jefferson College’s Henry Memorial Center.

The Comets defeated Trinity and the Prexies topped Canon-McMillan to set up an early-season showdown.

The anticipation for the game was high and local fans filled Henry Memorial Center for the championship game.

It was no contest. IC romped.

Natili III’s 43 points led the rout. The Comets let it be known, as Coach Natili said several months earlier, they would be the ones being chased.

IC won the game, 79-46. It was the Comets’ first win over Wash High since 1970. The Comets were now 11-1 and full of confidence.

“It was a huge win,” Natili III said. “It dispelled a lot of demons. After losing that game our junior year when Butchie threw in the prayer, we were confident that from that point forward, we would be better than Wash High the following season.

“It had been so long since IC beat a team from Wash High. That got the monkey off our backs.”

Coach Natili said the big performance just solidified the players’ belief in the strength of the team and that they had turned the corner against the Prexies.

“Obviously, we beat them pretty bad,” Natili said. “That sort of substantiated what we thought, that we were pretty good. I was a little concerned knowing we had to play them twice more – in more important games in the section.

“I knew the Wash High kids would come back. Sometimes, when you beat a team by 30, kids can get a little complacent. But we used that win as a stepping stone and that was big for us.”

Going small

Conventional wisdom was IC would play better at home in the cozy confines of its small gymnasium, which was a bit shorter than Wash High’s gym.

The fact is the smaller gym floor sizes compared with W&J’s large playing surface helped the Prexies in defending Natili III.

“I remember Coach (Bill) Fleissner deciding on playing a box-and-one of Raymond,” Harton said. “I chased (teammate) B.B. Sadler, who was playing Raymond’s role, all over the floor in practice.

“My job was to stay in Raymond’s hip pocket all game long. I remember at the end of the first half of our game there, I was dead from doing that to defend him.”

The Prexies bounced back, played patient and poised and used the smaller floor to stall IC’s running game and slow down the runaway offensive efforts of the younger Natili.

The Prexies earned a convincing, 71-52, victory to avenge the earlier defeat and take control of the section. Natili scored 16 but Wash High countered with 22 points from Lenny Porter and 21 from Freemont Catlin in front of a standing-room-only crowd.

“That gym was bursting with people,” Silbaugh said. “It was phenomenal in there. I know some extra bleachers were brought in from the (YMCA).

“Wash High was focused, and Raymond was option one. It seemed we were a step behind all night. They had an answer for everything we were doing. It ended up like a lot of Wash High games in the past. But we didn’t lose any confidence and Coach Natili talked us through it. We still felt we would win the section.”

“They city was electric for those games,” Harton said.

The third, and penultimate meeting between IC and Wash High came just short of a month later at Wash High. The Comets were in must-win mode to have a chance to win the section title. They nearly tripped against South Park, a team that they had defeated by 58 points earlier in the season, just before playing Wash High.

IC pulled out a two-point victory over the Eagles to set up its game against the Prexies.

Again, Wash High’s defense kept Natili III in check, limiting him to 10 points and just two field goals.

But Silbaugh proved to be the difference. In the closest game of the three played to that point, Coach Natili employed a strategy to unleash Silbaugh on the back side of the Comets’ offense to gain opportunities to drive the line and the baseline. That is exactly what Silbaugh did.

He stuck a dagger in the Prexies, scoring 24 points. Wash High had no answer and the Prexies’ uneven shooting produced just five field goals in 26 attempts in the second half and they went one-for-13 in the fourth quarter. Wash High still had a chance late but missed free throws by John Howard and Catlin left the Prexies short and IC walked away with a 55-51 win and a WPIAL playoff berth.

“They smacked us around at IC,” said Westcott. “Going to Wash High to win a basketball game was no easy deal. Doug picked up his game. He had a phenomenal performance.”

Natili III said his father’s strategy of reversing the ball and having Silbaugh drive to the basket was the difference in the game.

“And Doug did what he was coached to do,” the younger Natili said. “We worked on it and prepared for it and Doug stepped up and filled the scoring void.”

Said Coach Natili: “We made some adjustments to our offense. We had to. Doug played a great game. It was the best game of the four the teams played that season. We were upset losing to them on our floor. But the kids pulled it together. It was important to win a close game like that against them.”

One for the trophy case

In 1980, the WPIAL broke first-place ties by playing essentially a section championship game.

The final game was played at Trinity on a bigger floor and IC used that advantage to get its spacing, open up its running game and finally find a way to shake Natili III loose of the Prexies’ defense.

Cain and Gillespie took charge early and IC forced Wash High to play from behind and move back into a man-to-man defense that the younger Natili could exploit.

IC won its first section title with a 69-56 victory. Natili III scored 30 points, 22 in the second half. Maloy pitched in 10 in the first half.

“For me, we had played together so long, being at Park and Dewey playground or in one of the gyms around town,” Gillespie said. “We knew we were going to be good and we knew we were going to win.

“At the playgrounds, it was fun. We wanted to see how long we could stay on the court. We just had fun. There was a healthy respect between the teams. We felt we could run with any team. In my opinion, Rick Cain was the key to the last game. He set the tone early and we regained the tempo.”

IC had a basketball to put in its trophy case.

“We saw that ball from 1970 every day from grade school to high school,” Silbaugh said. “It was a constant reminder that we had not won anything of significance. Yes, we wanted to put one of our own in there to give it company.”

The final chapter

IC knocked off Charleroi in the opening round of the WPIAL playoffs before seeing it all end in a second-round, 69-47, loss to Clairton at the old Monessen High School.

Maloy and Silbaugh scored 16 points each, Natili was held to 11.

It wasn’t a good game or night for the Comets.

“It was a bad game for us,” Natili III said. “My dad felt we drew the short straw in the seeding, and he wasn’t happy. I had to have a good game for us to win and I didn’t.

“We spent a lot of years together and we had a goal in our mind the entire time to win some type of championship. In my mind, I think we were better than we ended up. I felt we underperformed a little bit with that loss. It was a bad draw. It doesn’t change the fact we didn’t play well, and I didn’t play well.”

While the ending was tough, it could not dampen the season in general.

“Winning the section felt so good,” Coach Natili said. “To be able to go out and compete with Wash High and beat them to win the section. The kids were so happy that night.

“Those games rejuvenated basketball in the city. It created a lot of interest. I know we were all glad to be part of that. It was a great year. We accomplished more than what a lot of people thought we were capable of doing.”