CENTAUR SEASONS: "These Guys are Slappin’ Us in the Face!" — entry #16 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 40 years ago today.

PREVIOUS GAME: Centaurs 56, Philadelphia Pharmacy 71, last night

NEXT GAME: at Spring Garden College, in five days

CENTAUR SEASON: 2-6

We lost to Pharmacy, 71-56. We were down 18 at halftime, 39-21. And we looked terrible — really, honestly terrible. We were standing around, we were forcing shots, we weren’t crashing the boards. And they were, or at least it seemed, doing everything right.

“THESE GUYS ARE SLAPPIN’ US IN THE FACE!”

That’s what Jerry Fleming screamed at halftime when we slunk into the locker room. And he was right. Once in, I noticed that Flem was standing with his back to everybody. He told me later he was so angry he was crying. Total and complete frustration. He said that he never felt worse about a ball game than he did at halftime of this Philly Pharmacy game. And this from a guy who never plays.

(“These Guys Are Slappin’ Us in the Face!” continues below)

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WELCOME TO CENTAUR SEASONS. “These Guys Are Slappin’ Us in the Face!” 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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In the locker room at halftime, for the first time all season, Coach Sabota yelled. I mean, really yelled at us. He banged lockers. He swore, He ranted. He raved.

He couldn’t have done anything better. As Coach said after the game:

“I got three facts for you. One, we outscored a team, 38-35 in the second half, after that team had beaten us by 19 in the first half. Two, we cut our turnovers in half. And three, we doubled our rebounds in the second half, as well as doubling our shooting percentage.”

There were other facts that came out later. Two guys who on Pharmacy’s team scored 14 points apiece in the first half, in the second half they scored a combined 12.

We were, to put it bluntly, a completely different team in the second half.

This was also, without doubt, the best game, or half, I have played all season: 11 rebounds, four blocked shots, one steal. I held their big boy – 6’8” – to six points in the second half. He had four rebounds in that half as well.

Coach yelled and raved and fumed. It was all a question of motivation. Even though we lost that game – we got as close as nine points, twice – that game, or at least that half, was genuinely fun to play in.

(Reminder when next we meet: Jerry Fleming and Philly Pharmacy, LAST year.)

PREVIOUS GAME: Centaurs 56, Philadelphia Pharmacy 71, last night

NEXT GAME: Spring Garden College, five days

1972-73 CENTAUR SEASON Schedule and Results:

12/1 — 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 — 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

2-3 — at Messiah College

2-6 — at Wilmington

2-13 — RUTGERS, S. JERSEY

2-16 — LEHIGH CCC

2-20 — MESSIAH

2-22 — NORTHAMPTON CCC

2-24 — PHILLY PHARMACY

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.