Phillip T. Neal
Men's Basketball (1970-1972)
Top-three nationally in scoring at 32.6 points per game in 1970-71
2nd Team NJCAA All-American as a freshman
Selected All-Region First Team and to the Junior College All-Star team
Skyway Conference Player of the Year 1971
NBA invite by Seattle Supersonics, played three years with Harlem Diplomats
The first years for most athletic programs are often the toughest. To build successful teams, you need to attract quality student-athletes, which is more difficult when wins are few and far between. For Waubonsee’s fledgling men’s basketball program in 1970, everything changed when the 6’4” tall, high flying Phill Neal stepped on to campus. An All-Upstate Eight Conference forward from Aurora East High School, Neal led the Chiefs to the college’s first ever Skyway Conference Championship and garnered national attention in the process, laying the foundation for Waubonsee’s decades-long winning basketball tradition.
Neal was drafted into the United States Army in 1967 and was stationed in Korea. He returned to Aurora in 1969 and completed his GED before enrolling at Waubonsee. His freshman season in 1970-71 is still one for the Chiefs’ record books. Neal finished the season third in the nation in scoring, averaging 33.0 points per game. In Skyway play he averaged 35.7 points per contest and was the unanimous choice as the conference’s Player of the Year. One of the highlights of Neal’s record-setting season was when he had a memorable 48-point, 25 rebound performance in a win at Lake County. A week later he eclipsed that mark when he set Waubonsee’s single-game scoring record which stood for 15 years. Despite being double and sometimes triple teamed defensively, Neal tallied 50 points and grabbed 21 rebounds in a win over McHenry County. In 10 consecutive games he scored 30 or more points, and averaged in double figures for rebounds on the season. Along the way he was chosen to the Rend Lake All-Tournament team and participated in the Junior College All-Star game at Illinois State University. Not surprisingly he was selected to the All-Region First Team, which was comprised of the entire state of Illinois back then. His historic season was then capped off when he was named an NJCAA Second Team All-American.
Legendary Chiefs’ coach Ray Lumpp simply stated “As Neal went, so did our team. And that was usually a good thing.” Unfortunately an injury derailed his sophomore season and Neal played sparingly in only half of Waubonsee’s games. He was later invited to a professional tryout with the NBA’s Seattle Supersonics in 1973, and went on to play three years of entertainment basketball with the globetrotting Harlem Diplomats based out of Toronto, Canada.
Neal went on to work for Western Electric, the predecessor to AT&T. He retired in 2014 after 38 years on the job, the final 15 of which were for the General Dynamics Corporation. Neal and his wife Hazel currently live in Greensboro, North Carolina and have three children, daughter Nicole and sons Rodney and David. They are also the proud grandparents of six, granddaughters Whitney and Jasmine, and grandsons Donovan, Dakari, Brandon and David Jr.