H-DNL Hoops 1972-1974

Ted,

A friend sent this to me. Good story. In defense of the quality of SB v EHS basketball, I recall only 2 guys who started school at Eureka coming over to St. Bernards. Neither got on the court in a close game in 2 years. In 73 we mostly played 6/7 deep and in 74 7/8 deep. All were original SB guys. We beat Eureka both years.

Pat Barry
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Pat Barry was a really good two-sport athlete at St. Bernard in the 1970s. He played with the Crusaders teams I mentioned in the stories I wrote about Mark Livingston and cruising Henderson Center. And, Pat's right...St. Bernard's basketball team was better than Eureka in that time frame. Way better. Barry, Livingston, Zach Barnes, Wade Nalley...much better than Eureka at that point.

The stuff I write isn't intended to be a balanced account of whatever I'm writing about. A total reassessment of the 1972-1974 high school basketball scene would've taken hours to write and bored most everybody but me and anybody who played then and reads this now. So, I just stuck to how I enjoyed knowing a couple (Pat's right, just 2 guys) Eureka players got cut from the EHS JV team I inexplicably made and transferred to St. Bernard. When I was writing the stories, I thought it was three guys who transferred...then I read Pat's comment and thought, "I'm a knucklehead."

I hope folks keep in mind that I don't research this stuff -- so, I didn't mean to put a knock on St. Bernard basketball from that era...nor to inflate my status as a player. The story was written based on how a dopey kid saw things in 1972, 1973 sitting in the stands at a basketball game...

If people want a scouting report on basketball from 1971-1974, I could write it...but, that surely wasn't the intention with the stories I did write.

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Pat Barry and Eureka High's Simon Abittan were sort of crosstown rivals, on the court. I saw some pretty highly-touted shooters in the H-DNL over the years...I rarely thought anyone had a better stroke than Abittan did. And, I didn't see many guards in my years up there who were tougher and better scorers than Barry was.
I really didn't know either of them very well, but ... they were really good players who reminded me that not every remarkable basketball player is remembered 30-plus years later. Well...I remember them ...