Your Moment of Back In My Day

 Somewhere Phil Buck must be having himself a laugh. Let's begin there this morning.

Bucky is gone now, God rest his wonderful soul, but before he went to his reward he was a hell of a high school basketball coach, and one hell of a man. He was at once gruff and funny as a crutch, and as old school as inkwells. And back in the 1970s and 80s he coached one Indiana Mr. Basketball (Ray Tolbert) and sent a bunch of kids off to college from Madison Heights High School in Anderson, where he was only a legend.

Sent Tolbert, Stew Robinson and Winston Morgan to Bob Knight at Indiana, Buck did. Sent Harry Morgan to Indiana State, and Brad Duncan to Illinois State.

But back to why he's laughing today.

He's laughing because the girls semistate was played over the weekend, and the coach of one of the teams that lost -- undefeated Eastern Hancock, which was upset by Brownstown Central in the championship game -- was saying what a disservice it was to make kids play two games in one day. Shari Doud's team had to go overtime to beat Sheridan in the morning round, see, and she cited fatigue as a factor in the Royals' stunning loss.

"This is not a sour grapes thing, but the IHSAA does an injustice to any semistate tournament for any team  by playing two games in a day," Doud said. "It's ridiculous ... Win or lose for either team, it's too much in one day for these kids."

This is where I hear Phil Buck laughing.

Because, listen, back in Buck's day (and mine, too, OK?) teams didn't just have to play two games in one day in one round of the state tournament. To win a state title, they had to do it three weekends in a row -- at regional, semistate and state. And somehow they managed to do it.

Too much for these kids?

I asked Buck about that once, years ago. And as I imagine him doing now, he laughed. Then he said something like this: "Ah, Benny (he was of the few people who could get away with calling me 'Benny'), these kids play eight hours a day in the summer. Two games in one day is nothing."

Now, that was then, and this is now. So maybe kids don't spend all day hooping on the playground in the summer the way they used to.

But a lot of them do play AAU ball, which sometimes compels them to play two or three games a day during summer tournaments. Yet suddenly they can't handle two games in a day in February or March?

Now I'm laughing.