Nearly 40 years ago, I was was the beat writer for the ascendant Eastern Michigan University men’s basketball for EMU’s student newspaper, The Eastern Echo. The head coach, his first as without the interim title, was Ben Braun.
My second – and final – season on the beat ended in Lincoln, NE, of all places, where the 15th-seeded Hurons met 2nd-seeded and regular-season Big East Champion, Pitt, in the first round of the 1988 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.
The Panthers won that game, 108-90, but I’m not sure I cared too much. I was covering an NCAA Tournament game! And playing that night on the University of Nebraska’s campus was Kansas and a certain star named Danny Manning. The Jayhawks wound up winning it all in 1988.
I saw Coach Braun around in the coming years before I moved to Alaska and he to the University of California Berkeley, but our interactions were limited to, perhaps, a head nod or a hello.
So it was quite a bit of fun to – thanks to social media – reconnect and invite him onto Conversations with Sports Fans for a long overdue catch up. We talk about all things you’d expect a pair of fellas who haven’t spoken in going on 40 years talk about.
Here’s hoping you enjoy the Conversation as much as I did.