Dan McCarrell (center) won three consecutive national championships at North Park with Bosko Djurickovic (left) in the late 1970s. North Park Historical Photograph Collection

By Gordon Mann
D3hoops.com

The architect for the greatest dynasty in Division III men's basketball grew up close to where he started his legacy.

• Small College Basketball HOF class includes three from D3
• Inductee profile: Steve Honderd, Calvin | Joey Flannery, Babson

Dan McCarrell grew up on the suburban side of the border between Chicago and Cicero Township, where his father Doctor William “Billy” McCarrell was a prominent church leader.

Dr. McCarrell led the Cicero Bible Church that sat a few blocks from the Hawthorne Inn where Al Capone (also a Cicero native) ran his criminal syndicate. Cicero Bible Church provided a godly refuge during Chicago’s mob-stained 1920s, and McCarrell’s work attracted the attention of Wheaton College president Charles Blanchard. Blanchard invited McCarrell to join the College’s Board of Trustees, a position he held for 46 years.

McCarrell’s children followed their father to Wheaton, at least initially. Older brother David played football at Wheaton, graduated from the college in 1957, and then became the head football coach at North Park Academy. Dan also enrolled at Wheaton but, after he aggravated a shoulder injury he suffered playing high school football, he decided he needed a fresh start. David suggested the school down the road from where he was coaching – North Park College and Theological Seminary – and Dan transferred there.

A couple years later, Royner Greene also arrived at North Park. After graduating from the University of Illinois, Greene had a 13-year stint as the head basketball coach at Cornell in Upstate New York and won an Ivy league title in 1954. Greene named McCarrell captain in his senior year and the Vikings went 11-8. McCarrell graduated and then started coaching at North Park Academy.

A couple of years later, Greene called McCarrell and offered him an assistant position on his coaching staff. At that point, Greene was also North Park’s Athletic Director and the Vikings had started to compete in the Collegiate Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin (CCIW).

McCarrell credits Greene for teaching him to emphasize fundamentals as a coach. Players should arrive on time and practice hard. Coaches should scout and prepare well for each game. “He was a heck of a coach and a heck of a man,” McCarrell recalls of his mentor.

After seven seasons as North Park’s head coach, Greene decided to step down and turn the program over to McCarrell. The transition paid off immediately, as the Vikings improved their conference record from 6-6 (fourth place in the CCIW in 1966-67) to 12-4 (second place in 1967-68). North Park did even better in McCarrell’s second season as head coach, winning the CCIW with a 21-5 mark (13-3 in conference) and reaching the 1969 NCAA College Division basketball tournament, where the Vikings split a pair of games.

McCarrell gradually built relationships with local high school coaches while scouting games in search of players who could help North Park compete in the CCIW. “We really got to know people and really built relationships with the high school coaches,” McCarrell explains. “We tried to open our facilities, so coaches could practice in them. We had a good graduation record. In those days, you built relationships with coaches, and they liked the ways we handled their kids.”  

One of the shorter recruiting trips was a walk to Von Stueben High School, near North Park. That night, Von Stueben hosted Schurz High School, and the visiting team got 35 points from senior Bosko Djurickovic. After the game McCarrell spoke with Djurickovic and invited him to come visit North Park.

“I think Coach thought he was getting a better player than I really was,” Djurickovic jokingly remembers of that first meeting. He lived one 15-minute bus ride from campus and agreed to visit and then attend North Park. “I didn’t really have too many other opportunities.”

Djurickovic played for McCarrell, graduated from North Park in 1973, and eventually joined McCarrell’s staff. “Bosko played for me, coached for me, and probably ate as many meals at my house as his own,” McCarrell recalls.

Good food wasn’t the only thing Djurickovic took in at the McCarrell house. He soaked up as much as he could about coaching basketball from McCarrell.

“He was a very, very strong leader. He wasn’t a crazy guy. He was very understated at times,” Djurickovic notes. “But I never met a coach that was better prepared for each game, each practice. His philosophy was that the biggest game was the next game. That made him an outstanding coach. He really approached every game as if everyone was the biggest of the year.”

Building a dynasty

Left to right: North Park head coach Dan McCarrell, forward Jim Clausen, Michael Harper, guard Modzel Greer, guard Michael Thomas, guard Gregg Gierke and assistant coach Bosko Djurickovic North Park University Historical Photograph Collection

A few years later, McCarrell and Djurickovic started to assemble the team that eventually became Division III basketball’s greatest dynasty.

• More coverage of D3's greatest dynasty: First title (1978) | Second title (1979) | Third title (1980)
• North Park centerpiece enters Hall of Fame (July 2019)

A 6-foot-5 prospect from Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary named Michael Harper caught their eye, if they could convince him to forgo a potential path to Catholic priesthood. Michael’s brother Walter put North Park on their tour of Chicago schools, and Harper found his home on Chicago’s north side.

“When I went on campus, they were the nicest people and it was one of the first times I went to school with girls and they were really pretty, so I was like, ‘I guess this is the place to be,’” Harper told D3hoops in 2019. “It was just nice to be selected, to go to school and know that the administration, especially the people from the president on down, wanted me to be on campus.”

In his first year at North Park, Harper shot to 6-foot-10, a growth spurt so prodigious that he needed help from the local hospital fending off fainting spells and a job washing dishes at the campus cafeteria to keep his caloric intake up. The Vikings’ growth spurt as a team was more incremental, as they bumped their record from 15-10 to 18-8, both of which equated to fifth place finishes in the CCIW. But they did add Harper and fellow freshman Modzel “Bud” Greer, who finished second on the team in scoring, to their roster.

McCarrell continued to pound the recruiting pavement, this time in pursuit of a point guard. He was particularly high on a player named Michael Thomas at Proviso East High School in Maywood. Proviso East was a popular spot for college recruiters because the team featured a highly touted prospect named Glenn Rivers. McCarrell was keen on Thomas, especially after watching him play well against another decorated Chicago-area prospect, Isaiah Thomas. Rivers eventually went to Marquette, and then the NBA, where “Doc” has had a long career as a player and coach. Michael Thomas headed to North Park where he joined Harper, Greer, and a solid group of upperclassmen.

McCarrell knew he had something special when he landed Thomas. “I sort of knew it when Thomas came in. He put the frosting on the cake.”

The next season got off to a sweet start, as the Vikings won eight of their first nine games, the lone loss coming at Illinois Wesleyan. North Park dropped a two-point contest to San Francisco State and then closed the regular season with 16 straight wins.

The Vikings won the CCIW with a 15-1 record and headed to Pella, Iowa for the NCAA Tournament. After beating Ripon in the first round, Michael Thomas came up with a late steal to seal the Vikings’ 65-62 win over Minnesota-Morris.

“People thought we were so potent on offense, but we were excellent on defense that year,” Thomas recalled in a 2005 retrospective. “[Al] May could hawk you on defense and all seven of us could play defense. We could blow you out, but we could shut you down too. Usually, you’re one or the other.”

In the next round, the Vikings took a long road trip to Northern California where they faced a Humboldt State program that had been a Division II program a couple seasons prior. North Park survived a tough battle and advanced 79-76 in overtime, then headed back to Illinois where conference rival Augustana was hosting the national championship weekend.

North Park shook off a slow start in the semifinals and downed Albion, 75-69. That set up a 1-versus-2 battle against Widener University. Led by C. Alan Rowe, Widener featured a 1-3-1 zone defense that frustrated opponents, including Stony Brook (N.Y.) which scored just 38 points in the national semifinal loss to Widener. In the championship game, North Park broke down Widener’s zone defense and Harper scored 17 points, leading the Vikings to victory, 69-57.

The next season, McCarrell returned his top three players with Harper and Greer as juniors and Thomas a sophomore. Sports Illustrated writer Steve Wulf previewed the 1978-79 season by making a prescient observation

“The makers of the [1978 championship] banner would not have been overly presumptuous had they added 1979 and 1980, because the Vikings are, in a word, loaded,” Wulf wrote in November 1978.

In 1979, the Vikings won the CCIW title again, clinching it in the season finale by throttling North Central, 106-72. North Park dropped its final regular season game against eventual Division II Tournament finalist UW-Green Bay and then survived a scare in the first round of the Division III Tournament. Beloit had a potential game-winning shot rim out and the Vikings hung on for a 63-62 victory. The Vikings then rolled to the 1979 national title game where they beat Potsdam State, 66-62.

North Park followed its second national title with a third in 1979-80. That season’s highlight victory may have come in the second round of the NCAA Tournament when North Park topped CCIW rival Augustana, 72-60. The teams had split their two regular season matchups but Harper’s double-double powered North Park to victory. The Vikings completed their three-peat with an 83-76 win over Upsala (N.J.).

Over that three-year span, North Park went 43-5 against the CCIW and 40-5 against everyone else, including several higher division opponents. The fact that the greatest team in Division III history did not go undefeated in its own conference was a testament to the CCIW’s strength, with Augustana and Illinois Wesleyan looming especially large at that time.

Augustana was a perennial power under head coach Jim Borcherding, who won least 20 games in seven consecutive seasons. In 1972, Borcherding’s Vikings went 16-0 in the CCIW and, more than 50 years later, that’s still the last team to complete a perfect CCIW men’s basketball season.  Augustana finished third in the country in 1975 and 1976 and then was the host site for all three of McCarrell’s Division III national championship victories.

Illinois Wesleyan was also a national title contender, though the Titans competed in the NAIA tournament. Under head coach Dennie Bridges, the Titans won three CCIW straight titles preceding the Harper-Thomas-Greer era at North Park. Illinois Wesleyan won plenty more over the years and Bridges finished his 36-year career with 666 wins, all of them in Bloomington, Ill.

Sitting on the North Park sideline, Djurickovic got a master’s class in successful coaching styles.

“When Coach [McCarrell] was at North Park, it was Bridges at Illinois Wesleyan and Jim Borcherding at Augustana. They were all elite, and they were all uniquely different. Coach was the most prepared. Bridges was the most brilliant offensive mind. Borcherding was crazy, running up and down the sidelines, and changing defensive lineups.”

McCarrell remembers those days fondly too, and is especially fond of Bridges.

“He was dynamite. He was tough as nails. They could always shoot the heck out of the ball. He was a very good basketball coach. And the officials in Bloomington always looked a little like Bridges,” McCarrell says with a smile.

Moving north and moving on

Dan McCarrell's legacy extends far beyond his 579 wins to the hundreds of lives he touched at North Park and Mankato State. North Park University Historical Photograph Collection

A few seasons after winning three Division III national titles, McCarrell was ready for a new challenge. He interviewed for and just missed landing the head coaching job at a few Division I programs. Mankato State University in Minnesota called McCarrell to see if he would be interested in moving north and making the jump to Division II.

McCarrell was intrigued by the opportunity, especially the potential for Mankato State to develop into a Division I program. It wasn’t too hard to look at Mankato State and see similarities to a program like Northern Iowa, which competed in the same conference as Mankato State and then jumped to Division I a few years before McCarrell arrived. He interviewed for the Mankato job and landed it, ending his time at Division III.

And if he had decided to leave coaching entirely, his legacy still would’ve been a great one.

But McCarrell’s success continued in Division II where he won 285 games over 17 seasons at the program now known as Minnesota State. His career is split equally with 17 seasons, nearly 300 wins and a winning percentage over .600 in both Divisions.

McCarrell notes that he enjoyed his time at Minnesota State, especially competing in the North Central Conference, which disbanded in 2008. Several programs from that conference did make the jump to Division I and now complete in the Summit League, though Minnesota State remains in Division II.

Meanwhile, the program he built at North Park also continued to succeed. After McCarrell left for Mankato, Djurickovic moved from assistant to head coach and had immediate success.

The Vikings went 22-4 overall and won the CCIW with a 14-2 mark in Djurickovic’s first season as head coach. After a comfortable first-round win in the NCAA Tournament, the Vikings won tight games against UW-Whitewater, Wittenberg, Nebraska Wesleyan and Potstam State (72-71) to capture their fourth national championship.  Two seasons later, in 1987, the Vikings won their fifth title, this time beating Clark (Mass.).

During that period, when Djurickovic was leading North Park back to glory in Division III and McCarrell was building the Mankato State program in Division II, they remained close, though each let the other find their own way.

Djurickovic’s style on the sideline was very different, but clearly worked. “It’s not the way I planned, but I was very different when I took over,” Djurickovic reflects on the transition from McCarrell. “I was very much in your face.”

The two regularly called each other after games. “We always stayed in touch. I’d call him after a tough loss,” McCarrell says. “We remain close. As close as family.”

Durickovic also remembers those phone calls.

“I did call Coach after games, but he was trying to get his own situation set up. Going Division III to Division II was not easy. We talked often enough, but I really didn’t ask him for advice, and he didn’t offer.”

Djurickovic notes that his relationship with McCarrell during their transition matches his relationship with his son Steve, who became the head coach at Carthage when Bosko retired from that University in 2020. Bosko notes that Steve’s coaching style is more like McCarrell than his own, and maybe McCarrell sees the resemblance, too. He notes that he watches Carthage’s games online because he enjoys watching Steve coach.

McCarrell will be inducted into the Small College Basketball Hall of Fame later this month, along with Calvin forward Steven Honderd and Babson guard Joey Flannery, each of whom also won Division III national titles.

His legacy includes 579 wins, 34 seasons, multiple conference titles and three national championships. It includes countless hours of preparation, practice and recruiting before every game. It includes dozens of young men who grew as players and people under him at North Park and Minnesota State.

When asked what he would write on his Hall of Fame plaque, McCarrell doesn’t hesitate.

“I’m just very thankful for the guys that helped me. The coaches I was able to have coach with me, especially Bosko. I feel so blessed.”

When asked to summarize McCarrell’s legacy, Djurickovic also focuses on the relationships he built throughout his life.

“Good guy. Good friend. Good coach. And I think he’d prefer to be known that way.”