CENTAUR SEASONS: "We Can Finish 8-and-9!" — entry #24 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, in February 1973.

PREVIOUS GAME: Centaurs 81, Lehigh CCC 76, four days ago

NEXT GAME: Messiah College, tonight

CENTAUR SEASON: 4-9

We beat Lehigh CCC, 81-76. We were ahead almost the whole way, usually by 7 to 9 points. They knocked it down to 3 to 5 points for a while, but it was one of those games that one team – this time US, for a change – was in control the whole way.

Roommate Dave Glielmi played a super ball game: 25 points, 16 rebounds, 3 assists.

Dave, you’re welcome.

At practice Coach Sabota said Dave’s performance was the finest individual performance of the season. Congratulations. He will of course never hear the end of it.

Hey! I played well, too: 4 points, 6 rebounds in 10 minutes playing time. Coach may have realized that. He started me on Blue Team at practice last night, and I played most of the way Blue.

(“We Can Finish 8-and-9!”continues below)

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WELCOME TO CENTAUR SEASONS. “”We Can Finish 8-and-9!” 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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Tonight, Messiah – we lost to them last time by 29 points.

The funny thing is – WE CAN BEAT THESE GUYS. We must play like we did for the first 16 minutes of our first encounter with them. With four minutes remaining in the first half we were down 2 points.

Chris Cashman is going around saying that we can’t beat them, that we’re outclassed, that they are so much better than us, every time and everyone of us.

WE CAN BEAT THEM! Let’s hope the psychology works. As Coach said: If we beat these guys tonight, we will easily win the next three – and finish up the season 8-9. So right now it is up to us.

A few quick notes which I now realize I neglected.

Bob Hoeffner was sick for the Spring Garden game, and he broke his right hand in the next game, Messiah. Right now he is acting in the capacity of assistant coach. Coach Sabota can use the help during games. He gets so excited he sometimes really doesn’t see a whole lot of what’s going on.

Hoeff says he’ll be ready to go play against Pharmacy, Feb. 24 on the schedule. I kinda doubt it, but I hope so. One thing for sure: He never gets upset (at least outwardly) about his setbacks.

PREVIOUS GAME: Centaurs 81, Lehigh CCC 76, four days ago

NEXT GAME: Messiah College, tonight

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

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.