Feb. 12--Humans rarely come as large and nimble as Loudon Vollbrecht.
Guys like that can fit on pretty much any basketball or football team, even if Geneva didn't have a basketball uniform big enough to fit the 6-foot-8, 300-pounder last season.
College coaches pursued him in both sports, but basketball was going to be his lone athletic pursuit after toiling in the trenches one more time for the Vikings' football team.
On the very last play of the season -- the final snap of his football career -- Vollbrecht suffered a torn ACL that ended his senior basketball season before it started.
Bright side first: He will heal and play high-level basketball again, for South Dakota State, but as far as Geneva's outlook without him, "everybody doubted us," senior forward Bennett Fuzak said.
With good reason.
Vollbrecht was set to be the team's focal point following the graduation of Nate Navigato, who set numerous school records while leading the Vikings to their first sectional championship and trip downstate since 1963.
"It almost made us have more motivation, because as soon as Loudon got hurt, people wrote us off," Fuzak said. "We lost our best player and we weren't going to make it very far. I think we've surprised everyone."
Geneva has a bunch of good-sized complementary players, but the Vikings were left with no alpha dog when Vollbrecht went down.
Fuzak, a 6-8 senior who averaged 6.2 points per game last season, turned out to be that guy, but that's the abridged version of the Vikings' fourth straight 20-win season.
A Division II recruit, Fuzak is averaging 17.9 points and 4.8 rebounds while shooting 40.7 percent from 3-point range, but those team-leading numbers didn't do Geneva much good during the eight games he missed with a head injury.
The injury bug also bit the team's best athlete and individual defender, Princeton-bound football player Sean Chambers, who missed the season's first seven games.
Yet Geneva is 20-5 after holding its 10th opponent under 40 points in last Friday's 52-38 victory over archrival Batavia, and the Vikings are as good a bet as any to emerge from the wide-open Class 4A Rockford Sectional next month.
"I'm not making any grand predictions, but the thing I've really enjoyed is that we've faced adversity and other guys had to step up and play big roles for our team," Geneva coach Phil Ralston said. "We're seeing the benefits of that in the second half of the season and in the stretch run before the state tournament.
"If someone thinks they can shut down one player, we've proven against Larkin and Batavia and other teams that we have other kids who have proven they can score."
Only Fuzak averages double figures, while 6-8 sixth-man Jordan Vedder is at 9.4 points per game. Matt Johnston, Dom Navigato and Cole Navigato score between 6.2 and 7.3 and have taken turns making big shots.
Last year's team had a similar dynamic, with Nate Navigato surrounded by a host of complementary scorers, and if the overall talent level on this team isn't as high, these Vikings may be better in one key area.
"We are playing phenomenal defense," Ralston said. "I think our defense is better than last year. We are holding teams to 32-percent shooting. It's one of the best man-to-man teams I've coached."
Mike Helfgot is a freelance reporter for the Chicago Tribune.
