'We've gone from the hunter to the hunted'
Fresh off its Sweet Sixteen appearance last season, and with a roster even deeper than the one that produced a 24-6 record in 2022-2023, North Park enters this season with some unfinished business.
The place is called Sissy’s Sandwich Shop, directly across the street on Foster Avenue from the North Park University gym, and is run by the Esquivel sisters—Maricela, Yeni and Yanet. Yeni and Yanet, the older sisters, do all the cooking. Maricela, who left their home state of Michoacan, Mexico, 18 years ago to follow her big sisters to Chicago, handles the front of the room.
They were all working as servers at a Cuban restaurant when the pandemic hit and their hours were drastically cut back. They’d always cooked to rave reviews at home, and one day the sisters decided that maybe their friends were right: They should open their own restaurant. They found this spot in the neighborhood in which they lived—Albany Park, on the city’s Northwest Side.
The restaurant, which in its previous incarnation had been owned by a Venezuelan woman, sat on a patch of Foster Avenue that already had a couple of taco places, a Subway sandwich shop and a Nordic bistro, Tre Kronor, that had been in the neighborhood for 30 years and shares Swedish roots with the university across the street—North Park, founded in 1891 as a college by Swedish immigrants who’d broken with the state Lutheran church and established their own denomination, the Evangelical Covenant Church.
Sissy’s Sandwich Shop, run by the Esquivel sisters across the street from North Park’s gym, is a favorite lunch spot of NPU basketball coach Sean Smith and associate coach Edwind McGhee.
For decades, North Park had taught the sons and daughters of Swedes from Minnesota and Nebraska and Wisconsin, Andersons and Nelsons and Helwigs, Soderstroms and Wibergs and Gustafsons.
As the years passed, the mission changed, in part just to survive as a small liberal arts university, in part because those in charge took heed of how the neighborhood and world had rapidly changed around them—in Albany Park’s public schools, at last count, 49 languages are spoken. North Park embraced the opportunity to become a true urban destination, catering to sons and daughters who in many cases were the first in their families earning a college degree. More than half of the school’s roughly 2,800 undergraduates identify as persons of color.
Put a stickpin anywhere on the globe, and chances are a North Park student calls it home. The “Covies,” as the denomination’s progeny were known, now number just over six percent of the student population. Spanish long ago replaced Swedish as the language you were likely to hear on campus.
North Park’s gym, folded into the school’s primary classroom building, Carlson Tower, holds 1,500 fans. The men’s and women’s basketball teams play there. So do the men’s and women’s volleyball teams. The floor is painted with a dramatic rendering of the Chicago skyline.
Maricela Esquivel has yet to set foot inside the gym, but that may change as soon as one of Sissy’s most loyal customers invites her to cross the street to see his team play.
“This is where our money goes,’’ North Park basketball coach Sean Smith says, sliding into a window booth at Sissy’s alongside his associate head coach, Edwind McGhee.
Associate coach Edwind McGhee walked on at DePaul, became a scholarship athlete and by his senior season was a Blue Demons captain. He was All-Academic Big East four times.
Maricela knows their orders by heart. “(Smith) always orders the chicken sandwich with rice,’’ she said. “Ed orders the al pastor (pulled pork) sandwich or our empanadas.’’
Sissy’s shop will be here two years in December. Smith is beginning his second season as North Park’s head coach, McGhee still riding shotgun. Smith was 29 when he was hired and turned 30 in midseason. McGhee, a former walk-on at DePaul who was coaching Lincoln College until that NAIA school suddenly shuttered 18 months ago, turns 34 on New Year’s Day.
Season One could not have gone better. The Vikings had not had a winning season since 2016-17. That was followed by a four-season stretch in which their combined record was a ghastly 13-73, and in 2021-22, just before Smith was named coach, the team went 10-14.
Smith had never served as a head coach. He had spent three seasons as assistant at Wisconsin Lutheran College, which like North Park plays at the NCAA Division 3 level but competes in the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference, regarded a notch or two below the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin (CCIW) to which North Park belongs—and once dominated.
The Vikings won three consecutive D3 national titles from 1978-1980; after that third season, three Vikings—Michael Harper, Modzel Greer and Keith French--were drafted by the NBA; Duke had one player drafted (Harper went on to play 123 games over the span of two seasons with the Portland Trailblazers). North Park added two more titles, in 1985 and 1987, giving them a remarkable five titles in a 10-season span. No other D3 school can match their five national titles.
But those glory days were a distant memory. From the outside there was little reason to suggest that Smith’s hiring would alter North Park’s slide into also-ran status, especially since he wasn’t hired until that May, leaving him precious little time to recruit. He had no choice but to enter the transfer portal, bringing in nine transfers.
In a preseason poll of conference coaches, North Park was picked seventh, one spot below the cutoff for the conference tournament.
“That was understandable,’’ Smith said. “Nobody knew who we were as a staff. Our guys were unproven as a group. To be honest, nine transfers could turn into a pretty bad show.’’
Instead, stunning success. Smith and his staff brought a style of play—40 minutes of full-court defensive pressure and a transition offense that operated at warp speed—unlike anything his CCIW counterparts had seen. The Vikings forced opponents into an average of 19.7 turnovers a game and averaged 12.5 steals, both conference bests. In a span of 10 days early in the season, North Park won its first three conference games, including a 34-point rout of North Central, a preseason favorite, on the road. That was North Park’s coming-out party. The Vikings went 24-6, won the CCIW tournament for the first time in school history, and returned to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1990, advancing to the Sweet 16 before falling to Mt. Union (Ohio).
Smith, who was named D3 Coach of the Year by D3Hoops.com, had used those dim expectations to his advantage.
“That’s why we give credit to our guys,’’ he said. “They really bought into team first, we want to win. We targeted guys with chips on their shoulders. They bought into, ‘Everybody thinks we suck.’ Our motto last year was, ‘Nothing to lose, everything to prove.’’’
Two of those transfers, guards Kolden Vanlandingham (Earlham College) and Shamar Pumphrey (Aurora) were first-team All-CCIW; a third guard, Marquise Jackson (Lewis), was all-second team. Vanlandingham was the team’s leading scorer and a unanimous pick to the All-CCIW team. He led the Vikings in points, three-pointers and free throws made. Pumphrey led the team in assists and combined with Jackson to spearhead the Vikings’ relentless defense. Jackson has graduated, but Pumphrey and Landingham are back.
There is another group of transfers, including Phil Holmes, a 6-foot-9 center who played high school ball at Chicago prep powerhouse Simeon and has returned home from Northern Idaho; guards Preston Bax (Houghton), T.J. Gardner (D-1 Murray State), Kyren Gardner (Morton College), and Julian Gatewood (Aurora); and forward Taijon Barry (Moraine Valley Community College). Two other newcomers are promising freshmen, 6-8 forward D.J. Wallace (Hoffman Estates) and Trevon Roots (Marmion Academy).
To make his style of play work, Smith needs a strong bench of superbly conditioned athletes. He used 9 or 10 players in his rotation last season; the goal this year, he said, is to have a dozen players he can call upon without a significant dropoff in talent.
“On paper, there’s no question we’re deeper than last year,’’ he said. “No question. If it all comes together, that’s a question. But pure talent? It’s not even a conversation.’’
After winning the CCIW tournament for the first time in school history last season, North Park coach Sean Smith says his team has gone from the ‘hunter to the hunted’
The other given is this: North Park won’t be sneaking up on anyone this season. That was central to the message Smith delivered to his team when he gathered them for their first meeting early last month, and will almost certainly be repeated.
“I think our biggest message was, ‘Last year was last year, it doesn’t matter,’’’ Smith said. “’Congratulations, we did a great job last year, but nobody cares about that.’
“We’ve gone from the hunter to the hunted in a lot of ways, and we feel like we have more to do, basically. There’s a lot more for us to accomplish.
“That wasn’t our mountaintop. I think I’ve got a great group of guys coming back. They feel like the end of our season was not what it should have been. And so they’ve been motivated all summer to kind of come back and be like, that wasn’t a fluke. We’re not a flash in the pan. We’re back.’’
More chicken sandwiches and empanadas at Sissy’s. More great expectations on the other side of Foster Avenue.