CENTAUR SEASONS: Their Coach Said We Played Them the Best Game — entry #27 from "A history of the events of the Allentown College’s 1972-1973 B-Ball season …

… AS CHRONICLED BY, AND WITH THE PERSONAL MEMOIRS + OCCASSIONAL PHILOSOPHIZING OF THE AUTHOR, ONE STEPHEN J. McKEE”

This CENTAUR SEASONS post was written forty years ago.

PREVIOUS GAME: Centaurs 61, Philadelphia Pharmacy 79, two days ago

NEXT GAME: Baptist Bible, tomorrow night, last game of the season

CENTAUR SEASON: 5-11

It was a completely different first half against Philadelphia Pharmacy than the first half of the first game against Philly Pharmacy on Feb. 24.

In fact, it was a completely different game all the way around.

(“Their Coach Said We Played Them the Best Game” continues below)

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WELCOME TO CENTAUR SEASONS. “Their Coach Said We Played Them the Best Game” here on HoopsU.Com appears also on CENTAUR SEASONS, a “memory blog” of the half-good, half-bad, all-new Allentown College of St. Francis de Sales Centaurs in Center Valley, Pennsylvana. Forty years ago Steve kept a diary of his junior-year season. A blog before its time then, “A History of the Events …” is now an e-diary at CENTAUR SEASONS and here on HoopsU.com.

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We were down four at the half this time against Pharmacy, and we ended up losing by 17, but it was one of those games where the ending is always in doubt the entire way.

It was a rough game, too. A few bloody mouths and knees. Lots of elbows and pushin’ and boxin’.

Maybe not the best night for Parents’ Night. Oh, well.

But it was also a good game, I think.

In fact, one of the best games played by us as a team. Nobody really played super, whereas nobody played really bad.

Their big guy had eight points for the game – as opposed to 20 points last game. He scored 4 points on me, 4 on John Cooper. In the beginning of the second half they started going to him. He scored the first time — I was fronting him and they lobbed over my head. Coach told me to play behind him after that, and I blocked his next three shots. They didn’t go to him anymore after that.

Once again, Bobby Stormes got into a couple of tussles with players, and he almost got thrown out again.

So did Chris Cashman! I don’t think I have ever seen him as angry about a call. P.J. Brennan (The Kid) had to hold back Cash (The Old Man)!

After the game Coach Sabota told us the coach of Pharmacy told him after that we had just played them the roughest and best game of their season.

Some consolation, if nothing else.

We are now 3-and-2 in our “Third Season.”

And we got one last game on the schedule — Senior Night.

PREVIOUS GAME: Centaurs 61, Philadelphia Pharmacy, two days ago

NEXT GAME: Baptist Bible, tomorrow night, last game of the season

1972-73 CENTAUR SEASON Schedule and Results:

12-1-72 — at Lehigh CCC — W/81-71 — 1-0

12-4 — at Northampton CCC — W/87-50 — 2-0

12-6 — EASTERN BAPTIST — L/73-75 — 2-1

12-12 — SPRING GARDEN — L/54-66 — 2-2

12-16 — PHILLY BIBLE — L/72-79 — 2-3

1-18-73 — at Baptist Bible — L/82-84 — 2-4

1-19 — WILMINGTON — L/56-71 — 2-5

1-25 — at Philly Pharmacy — L/56-71 — 2-6

1-30 — at Spring Garden — L/64-69 — 2-7

2-3 — at Messiah College — L/47-76 — 2-8

2-6 — at Wilmington — L/52/88 — 2-9

2-13 — RUTGERS, S. JERSEY — W/89-68 — 3-9 (but 1-0!)

2-16 — LEHIGH CCC — W/81-76 — 4-9 (but 2-0!)

2-20 — MESSIAH — L/58-64 — 4-10 (but 2-1!)

2-22 — NORTHAMPTON CC — W/86-65 — 5-10 (but 3-1!)

2-24 — PHILLY PHARMACY — L/61-79 — 5-11 (but 3-2!)

2-27 — BAPTIST BIBLE

About
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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.