You spend your life within the health club, you spend as many hours enjoying and educating and training basketball as Bob Leckie has, then when a sport is received, the identical manner an elite chef is aware of his meal is completed with out counting on a timer.
Friday night time at Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Middle, that second arrived for Leckie sooner or later within the remaining minute — when it was clear the Saint Peter’s Peacocks weren’t going to overlook any free throws, when it was apparent they weren’t going to commit any egregious fouls, because the seconds melted away and there the Peacocks had been, safely on the left facet of the hyphen.
“Intuitively,” Leckie stated, laughing, “after so a few years and so many video games, you simply know.”
That half was simple. That half was acquainted.
This half wasn’t: As he watched his alma mater put the ending touches on a 67-64 win over Purdue within the East Area semifinals, securing a berth within the Elite Eight, Leckie felt one thing he’d by no means felt earlier than — not as a participant at Brooklyn’s St. Francis Prep or at Saint Peter’s, not as a coach at Bishop Loughlin or Saint Peter’s, not after hundreds and hundreds of video games.
He began to cry. At a basketball sport.
“And wouldn’t it, speaking to you proper now, I’m beginning to effectively up once more,” Leckie stated, laughing.
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Leckie was sitting on a constitution bus Saturday morning that was taking him and his outdated Saint Peter’s teammates again residence for the day — the place they might regroup, recharge their batteries and get a great night time’s sleep earlier than doing it once more Sunday. Then, the Peacocks will tackle North Carolina for the fitting to play within the Remaining 4.
Take into consideration that final sentence. Learn it once more.
Saint Peter’s. North Carolina. For the FINAL FOUR.
“Unfathomable,” Bob Leckie stated. Then he laughed.
“Unfreakingbelievable,” he added.
It has began to sink in for everybody — for the old-school die-hards like Leckie, and for everybody else who has merely adopted the Peacocks: They aren’t only a win away from the Remaining 4, they're now precisely midway to a nationwide championship. Three down, three to go. Which will appear unthinkable, or unimaginable, or unfathomable, or unfreakingbelievable.
However what if I’d instructed you two weeks in the past Saint Peter’s would nonetheless be standing and Kentucky, Gonzaga, Arizona and Baylor — amongst many, many others — weren’t.
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“I didn’t go to high school right here,” stated Larry Portocelli, who was standing in entrance of McDermott Corridor on the varsity’s postage-stamp-sized campus, close to the nook of Glenwood Avenue and Kennedy Boulevard. He was ready on a buddy and collectively they’d hoped to see if the varsity’s bookstore was open Saturday (it wasn’t, alas). “My buddies throughout the nation need Saint Peter’s gear. Who doesn’t love a narrative like this?”
Just a few blocks away, a five-minute stroll down Montgomery Road, the place it runs into Summit Avenue, the outdated Jersey Metropolis Armory stood proud sentry on a wet Saturday morning, its red-brick façade glistening as if boasting of all of the recollections bursting inside.
Again within the day, this was the place to be in Jersey Metropolis, again within the late ’60s when Leckie and his teammates on the Run Child Run Peacocks had been main the nation in scoring, dropping 109 on Manhattan and 112 on Vermont and 123 on Stonehill. There was one unforgettable Saturday night time in February ’68 when someway they squeezed 7,000 individuals in there with Niagara on the town. It was Calvin Murphy’s present that night time. He scored 50. It was the final sport Saint Peter’s misplaced that yr earlier than the NIT semifinals, in opposition to Jo Jo White and Kansas.
“We had been the darlings of Jersey Metropolis,” Leckie stated. “In all places you went, individuals knew who you had been.”
They may know this gaggle of Peacocks, too, and their names will resound in Jersey Metropolis so long as the old-timers have: Lee and Banks, Ndefo and Edert, the Drame twins. For individuals who stay and breathe Saint Peter’s, as they watch by way of moist eyes and scream with hoarse and scratchy voices, this can be an everlasting time stamp.
“They’ll by no means be forgotten,” Bob Leckie stated. “What they’ve performed, for themselves and for a college that actually wanted it? That’ll be endlessly.”
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