City/Suburban Hoops Report: Mike Bailey’s run at St. Patrick, Lyons’ finds its footing and a MSL breakdown

St. Patrick coach Mike Bailey continues to check off the boxes in his long, highly-successful coaching career.

Last season Bailey reached the IHSA State Finals for the first time, finishing third in Class 3A. He had been close before, losing in the super-sectional in 2001, 2015, 2022 and 2024.

Last week he won his 600th overall game at St. Pat’s, where he’s been running the program since 1993. Before taking over for Max Kurland at St. Pat’s, Bailey also had short stints at Dundee-Crown and St. Gregory, where he won a combined 96 games.

And now he’s on the verge of joining an exclusive club.

With two more wins — the Shamrocks play three home games this week against ranked Loyola, Carmel and Jones — Bailey will be one of only 28 coaches in state history with 700 career wins.

Bailey is the second coach in the state this season to join the 700 club. Moline’s Sean Taylor won his 700th game on Jan. 18.

In the NFL, football fans marvel at the fact that the Pittsburgh Steelers had only three coaches, Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher and Mike Tomlin, from 1969-2025. Amazingly, St. Patrick has had only two head coaches since 1959 — Kurland from the 1959-60 through 1993-94 seasons and Bailey for the past 32 years.

After going 8-18 in his first season, Bailey hasn’t had a losing season since. With a 19-3 record so far this year, Bailey has now strung together 31 consecutive winning seasons.

While the rock solid consistency of the program under Bailey has been his calling card, the intuitive defensive switch in 2019-20 — from man-to-man to the current and effective 1-3-1 defense — has been a boon. St. Pat’s is on pace for its fifth season of 23-plus wins since the defensive change, which includes three sectional titles.

Is Lyons ready for a resurgence?

They are unranked and have been forgotten. However, might a talented and still dangerous Lyons team be on the verge of putting it together?

Lyons began the season just on the outside looking in of the Super 25. They began the year 6-0 before a 71-61 December loss to Neuqua Valley while playing shorthanded.

With some injuries and puzzling losses mixed together, the Lions hit a rough patch and went 5-6 in late December and into January. Now they’ve reeled off five straight wins to improve to 16-6.

The core of senior guard Owen Carroll (8 ppg), 6-5 junior Timmy Sloan (8 ppg), 6-5 sophomore Grant Smith (17 ppg) and 6-5 junior Nate Woods (10 ppg) form a solid nucleus.

Through it all, Lyons, the preseason favorite in the West Suburban Silver, is still in the conference picture, just one game behind surprising York. The rematch is Tuesday night.

MSL breakdown

The Mid-Suburban League divided the haves from the have nots when it reconstructed its conference alignment for the 2025-26 school year. There is really no other way to put it.

The showdown in Palatine this past Friday night, where ranked Fremd stunned Palatine at the buzzer with first-place on the line in the MSL West, was another weekend where a significant matchup took place in the upper division. The top four teams in the MSL West, Fremd, Palatine, Hersey and Rolling Meadows, are an impressive 51-10 combined outside the conference.

But as expected, there is a massive discrepancy between the two divisions.

The MSL East has just two teams over the .500 mark. And while MSL East leader Hoffman Estates is a sparkling 22-3 and on top of the division, it lost by 26 points in a crossover game with Hersey, the third-place team in the MSL West.