Still waiting for the day the University of Maine men’s basketball team will be written into NCAA tournament brackets. …

MAX GOOD was ready to push the button. “You know, the up button on the elevator that takes you into the stratosphere. I wanted to get to the highest ledge.”

His Loyola-Marymount Lions lost in the West Coast Conference quarterfinals last Friday to San Francisco, 67-60. Too many Loyola-Marymount turnovers and too many San Francisco 3-point shots, 11 in all, were the difference.

In a season of highlights, the 70-year-old Mainer with the saltiest of tongues struggled with one colossal downer. “This was a very difficult loss to swallow. We beat that team twice during the season by a few points each time. People say beating a team three times is hard but it’s harder to beat a good team once.

“I’m very disappointed. That win would have put us in the NIT.” Two more wins would have meant the conference championship and the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. The Lions were last in March Madness in 1990.

Good’s passion to coach college basketball at the highest level still burns white-hot. The Jesuit university asked him to cut down on the bursts of profanities that shot from his mouth more than occasionally. He did. He didn’t change much else.

His team won 19 games this season, including seven on the road. Neither had happened in over 20 years. Loyola-Marymount was seeded fourth in the conference tournament but Good was named Coach of the Year. He shrugged off the recognition. The Lions struggled last season with an uncommon streak of injuries. Of course they would win more this year.

The Gardiner native has walked a long road, returning from Eastern Kentucky to coach the Maine Central Institute prep team for 10 years, beginning in 1990. His Bryant University teams were tough to beat. He was the interim head coach at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.

Good is not quite the lion in winter. His strength and dignity have not eroded. He is irascible but his players understand. “I felt badly for them when we lost,” said Good. “They’re a good group.

“Coaching them keeps me young although my wife sees it differently,” said Good. “She says coaching keeps me extremely immature. … “

DAVE CHADBOURNE’S cellphone rings. He eyes area codes and tries to remember who from his past and present is living where. Los Angeles came up. Max Good was calling to congratulate a fellow college basketball coach with Maine connections.

“To be honest, I haven’t even stepped back to smell the roses,” said Chadbourne. “Everything we’ve done since the fall has been about the present.”

Chadbourne has been the head men’s basketball coach at Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire for 13 seasons but this year has been one of a kind. First time winning the Northeast 10 Conference championship. First time ranked No. 1 in NCAA Division II regional standings. First time earning the No. 1 seed in the regional tournament, which begins Saturday at Assumption College in Worcester, Mass.

“We just finished our 91st practice,” said Chadbourne, who was named conference Coach of the Year. “Yes, I’ve kept track of how many. But these are great kids, fun to be around.”

Chadbourne played on the Wells High team that won the state Class B championship in 1983, beating Bucksport. He played at St. Joseph’s College and is in that school’s sports hall of fame. All that was in his distant past until this month when the calls started coming. Jim Kreie, a Wells teammate living in Texas, got through.

Chadbourne has worked to build this team. He’s recruited players from different places, different cultures. Players from small towns in New England and big places like New York City’s Harlem and Brooklyn. Players from England, Ireland, Greece and Croatia. Last year they came together, this year they’re winning. …

LAST WEEK’S anniversary column of the 1992 state championship basketball game between Bangor and South Portland stirred another memory. Sixty-five years ago, tiny Patten Academy left Aroostook County to travel to the old Boston Garden and beat Boston Latin 35-32 in the Class B division of the New England Basketball Tournament.

Patten Academy basketball coach Willis H. Phair, who also was the school’s principal, fielded a team of eight or nine players from the 27 boys in the school. Boston Latin had 1,200 boys. Lloyd Wilson, the Mainers’ tallest player was all of 6 feet. About 13,000 watched the game in Boston.

The Bangor and Aroostook Railroad honored the team with a dinner in Bangor the next night, delaying the team’s triumphant return to Patten by a day.

Thanks to Fred Sholler, who remembered.

Staff Writer Steve Solloway can be contacted at 791-6412 or at:

ssolloway@pressherald.com

Twitter: SteveSolloway