… AS CHRONICLED BY, AND WITH THE PERSONAL MEMOIRS + OCCASSIONAL PHILOSOPHIZING OF THE AUTHOR, ONE STEPHEN J. McKEE”
This CENTAUR SEASONS post was written in February 1973.
PREVIOUS GAME: Centaurs 58, Messiah College 64, two nights ago
NEXT GAME: Northampton Community CC, tonight
CENTAUR SEASON: 4-10
We lost to Messiah two nights ago, 64-58. WE WERE UP FOUR AT HALFTIME!
(We CAN beat these guys — just like I said in my last enry.)
It was, to say the least, a completely different game than the last time we played them (and got crushed by 29).
I started! First time since the second Wilmington game and only fifth time all year — first Lehigh CC, first Northampton CC, and the home opener agaisnt Eastern. Geesh.
When my roommate Dave Glielmi and I were both not starting together – the first Spring Garden and Baptist Bible games – we agreed that when the cheerleaders gave the introduction – “Yay Dennis, yay Ramella, yay-yay Dennis Ramella!” We would give each other a starting cheer. It started out as a joke, but now, when we ask ourselves who is going to start, we say: “Is it gonna be ‘Yay Dave, yay Glielmi, yay-yay Dave Glielmi’ tonight?”
Well anyway, to make a long story shorter, before this game Dave asked me if it was going to be “Yay Steve, yay McKee, yay-yay Steve McKee?” I said I didn’t know. Two minutes later, as I was standing next to Dave, the cheerleaders said, “Yay Steve, yay McKee, yay-yay Steve McKee.” We both started laughing right on the court.
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WELCOME TO CENTAUR SEASONS. “I Started!” 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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To say the least, the game with Messiah was a defensive battle. There was even one three-minute stretch in the second half where it was locked at 54-50. John Cooper and I did a good job shutting down there “wheel play,” as they call it. We planted ourselves in the middle of the lane and they couldn’t run their players around the post and go anywhere.
I played the first 12 minutes of the game. Blocked their big guy’s first three shots (he’s 6-foot-5) and forced him into a turnover the next time he got the ball. As Joey Thomson said, “He was talking to himself by the end of the game.”
This had to be the first game where I immediately established myself as the dominant big man in the game. As P.J. Brennan said: “He knew it and you knew it, so why get excited?”
If there has been any good that has come from this season, I think it must be that I have shown flashes where I was the dominant player in the game — the second half of the Pharmacy game, the Ursinus scrimmage preseason, most of the scrimmage against the Lehigh Freshman, that nine-minute stretch during the Rutgers game. And now the first 12 minutes of this second Messiah game. Last year I don’t think there was any one game that I really dominated. At least there has been some improvement. At least I think so.
My biggest problem has got to be consistency. I really cannot be counted on for anything, prior to the game. With me, you have to wait and see. And that’s enough to drive a coach batty!
I sprained my ankle again….
Tonight, we play Northampton Area Community College, at home. We beat them last time by 37. We should, we BETTER beat these guys. If we don’t, I think I’ll kill myself.
I’ve found that for the last three games – starting with Rutgers — I have been much more nervous than I was for the other games. The day of the Rutgers game I made a conscious effort at thinking about the game. Now it seems to be coming rather naturally. The nervousness, and that feeling in the stomach, start about 2 o’clock. By the time my 4 o’clock class rolls around, I can’t sit still. At dinner and till the game starts, I get really quiet. There have even been people coming up to me on game days who ask me:
“What’s the matter?”
“How come you’re so quiet?”
“You’re not yourself.”
The build-up, and then the let down, they are almost unbearable.
We will beat Northampton.
I think my ankle will be O.K.
PREVIOUS GAME: Centaurs 58, Messiah College 64, two nights ago
NEXT GAME: Northampton Community CC, 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 — L/58-64 — 4-10 (but 2-1!)
2-22 — NORTHAMPTON CCC
2-24 — PHILLY PHARMACY
2-27 — BAPTIST BIBLE
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.
- CENTAUR SEASONS: A new Inductee to the DeSales University Hall of Fame recognizes the contributions of the school’s orginal athletes … - September 18, 2013
- 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 - June 13, 2013
- CENTAUR SEASONS: In a ‘Carnival of Opportunity,’ One of Our Own Shines in an All-Star Game - May 14, 2013
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