CENTAUR (OFF) SEASONS: A dozen ways to read the 97 posts in the scorebook thus far — until a new roster begins taking the floor in the fall

Welcome to CENTAUR (OFF) SEASONS! If you’re a regular CENTAUR SEASONS reader here on HOOPSU.COM (thanks for coming back!) or you just dribbled onto the site for the first time (welcome aboard!), herewith for the summer break are a dozen different mix-and-match ways to access nearly all of the 97 CENTAUR SEASONS posts written during Season I.

New and original posts for CENTAUR SEASONS’ Year II will tip off in the fall. I look forward to seeing you then. But, please, don’t go away now:

THE TRIANGLE AND ONE: The Allentown College of St. Francis de Sales of this CENTAUR SEASONS blog was a brand new place in the late-’60s/early-’70s, making itself up as it went along. These four posts — a long bus ride (the triangle); sleeping in the gym during Christmas break (and one) — illustrate best the “singular sensation” and the “inadvertent education” offered by this tiny little Center Valley, Pennsylvania, school of those long-past days

EVERY CENTAUR-CENTRIC POST, IN ORDER: So you can read from the beginning …

ME, CENTAUR: My Tall (not to mention skinny) Tale

“CENTAUR SEASONS POSTS UP ON D3HOOPS” and HOOPSU.COM: Executive Editor Pat Coleman of the all-everything website for all things at the NCAA Division III level invited Centaur Seasons to take it’s best shot, and at HoopsU.com owner and founder Tony Alfonso has had Centaur Seasons in the starting line-up all year.

YA GOTTA START SOMEWHERE: Well, yeah. But these Original Centaurs, they started from nowhere…

“CENTAURUS AGONISTES”: Legends and Myths of the First Rivalry — A triumph in two acts and six scenes …

“SECRETS OF THE CENTAUR,” or, “FROM NOTHING, SOMETHING”: How (and why) at a brand-new college with so little to offer there was still so much to do

EVERY SEASON TELLS A STORY: Centaur Seasons began forty years ago when I kept a diary of my 1972-1973 junior season. Here it is, game by game and nearly word for word (and get a load of the insufferable English Major title, complete with misspelling!) …

TRIPLE THREAT: The legendary Centaur, the reason I’m a Centaur, the Centaur who coached me …

TO EVERY CENTAUR, A SEASON: There was little glory and fewer fans, but these guys (and eventually some girls) played anyway …

OFF COURT. ON CAMPUS: Remembering the Unforgettable

CENTAUR ROUND-UP: Columnist David Brooks, John Wooden, D3Hoops.com, HoopsU.com, the Rutgers scandal, a ‘CS’ reading in NYC, a look into the future, the US-USSR 1972 Olympic hoops final, plus A.E. Housman’s “To an Athlete Dying Young” — It’s all corralled here

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Steve McKee

Steve McKee is the author of CENTAUR SEASONS, a memory blog about his basketball-playing days at Allentown (Pa.) College of St. Francis de Sales in the early 1970s (a good excuse for using his college yearbook picture -- though there's NO excuse for that mustache and hair!).

CENTAUR SEASONS can also be found at www.centaurseasons.com. The centerpiece will be the posting in "real time" of the diary that Steve kept of his 1972-1973 junior-year season, beginning on November 30. Prior to that (and after), Steve will be posting regularly about his freshman, sophomore and senior seasons, as well as about what it was like to be there at the beginning to help get a struggling college basketball program off the ground.

Steve was the original writer of The Wall Street Journal's popular sports blog, "The Daily Fix" in 2001-2002, and was even dubbed "The Unwitting Father of the Sports Blog" by Gelf Magazine, the online publication of the "Varsity Letters Reading Series. Steve was the Journal's sports editor for its original Weekend sport section and was involved in all of the Journal's Olympics coverage, Winter and Summer, from 1996 through 2008.

He is the author of three books, most recently "My Father's Heart: A Son's Reckoning With the Legacy of Heart Disease," which he is adapting as a one-man show. For his first book, "The Call of the Game," Steve traveled the country in search of sports events -- including the famous N.C. State Wolfpack victory over "Phi Slamma Jamma" of the University of Houston. For his second book, COACH, among the 150+ coaches Steve interviewed are/were college basketball coaches John Wooden (UCLA), Pat Summitt (Tennessee), Frank Layden (Niagara), Bobby Cremins (Georgia Tech), P.J. Carlesimo (Seton Hall), Bill Guthridge (North Carolina), Abe Lemons (Texas), Stan Morrison (USC), Kathy Rush (Immaculata), Jim Satalin (Duquesne), Charlie Thomas (San Francisco State), Butch Van Bredda Koff (Princeton), Bill Whitmore (Vermont) and LaDonna Wilson (Austin Peay).

For more, you can click on www.steve-mckee.com, where you can find a TODAY show appearance and an NPR interview.