High school basketball tales

Recent events have caused me to start thinking a lot about Indiana basketball. I'm not talking about IU basketball, but the high school game I used to play. Because of the movie "Hoosiers," everyone seems to think all high school games in this state are exciting dramas played in packed houses. \n That's just not true. My senior year, we were 6-14. We couldn't have packed the house if we had played against Playboy Playmates. \n Well, that's probably an exaggeration. We probably could have packed the gym, but I doubt we would have won.\nI went to a school that was at the time the third smallest in the state, and we were just a bad team. I played as the starting center, and I'm only a little over 6-foot-4, which meant that under the bizarre measurement philosophy of the Indiana High School Athletic Association (if we list them as being taller they will somehow be taller) I was officially listed at 7-foot-6. I had a tough time when we played the bigger schools who had point guards my height. One game, when I matched up against a guy listed at 9-foot-8, I had 30-some odd points dropped on my head, that "some-odd" being in the vicinity of 18 or so.\nLooking back, I think our losing streaks might have had something to do with the team's diet. In Indiana we have a method of cooking called "country frying." This method is probably used throughout the country, but I doubt it's used in such a liberal manner as where I grew up. Back then, as now, I ate in many restaurants where the waitresses called me "hon." One particular diner in town could and would country fry anything, even a salad if one pushed the issue. \nMy buddy Bob, the team's stocky forward, and I used to eat a lot of country fried foods before games. That poor guy never could get enough to eat. He complained about small portions so much that the waitresses at the diner just cooked him a whole turkey one day. I remember when the waitress brought that big plate out to Bob with a smirk on her face. Bob remained unimpressed. "Damn it, I've seen more turkey on a chicken," he said. \nWe got beat by 44 points that night. Perhaps Bob found it difficult to make those quick cuts on the court with a belly full of red eye gravy.\nOf course, the long losing streaks had a lot of things blamed on them, for example, lack of female interest in any of the team members. In our minds, the fact that girls paid no attention to us couldn't have possibly had anything to do with our pimply faces and shoulders, our propensity for wearing the same blue jeans four days a week or our somewhat casual take on personal hygiene. The situation got so bad that one night after a particularly humiliating loss, by 35 points on our own floor, we all decided to sneak into a strip club where we knew the doorman. I clearly remember drinking cold beer and staring at those jiggly breasts, but then Bob had to put his shirt on to go inside. \nIndiana used to have an all-inclusive basketball tournament. That meant the small schools and the big schools all went for the same title. We, of course, got beaten in the first game of sectionals. I don't think anyone in the stands was surprised, or sober for that matter. We lost a lot of games. But we won a few we shouldn't have, and we were all probably better for it. We never had packed gyms, hysterical coaches or media controversies. \nThe funny thing was, nobody on the team cared that much. We were having too much fun.