When you talk about the history of Western Pennsylvania high school basketball, certain names immediately come to mind.

The legendary players. The championship coaches. The great teams. The unforgettable games.

But there is another name that deserves to be mentioned whenever the history of basketball in this area is discussed.

Lawrence “Deuce” Skurcenski.

If you played high school basketball in Western Pennsylvania during his lifetime, there is a good chance you crossed paths with Deuce.

And if you ever met him, you probably never forgot him.

Deuce wasn’t a basketball player or a coach. He was a statistician, a scorekeeper, a historian, and one of the most passionate high school sports fans this area has ever seen.

He passed away in 2014 at the age of 73, but more than a decade later, I still remember my experiences with him like they happened yesterday.

And when I think about the people who helped make Western Pennsylvania basketball special, Deuce is one of the first names that comes to mind.

 

MY FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH DEUCE

I will never forget the first time I met Deuce.

I was a young basketball player at Penn Hills, and here comes this man approaching me, talking loud, getting all up in my personal space, practically spitting in my face because he was so excited.

I’m looking at him thinking, who the hell is this guy? I had no idea who he was. But apparently, he knew everything about me.

He knew my scoring averages. He knew how many points I had scored. He knew my accomplishments. He knew statistics about my career that I probably couldn’t have told you myself.

And he wasn’t just talking about me.

He would start bringing up other players, other schools, games from years before, scoring records, and all kinds of basketball history. The man was a walking encyclopedia of Western Pennsylvania high school sports.

Every time I saw him, he wanted to shake my hand. And every time he shook my hand, he had another crazy statistic to tell me. Sometimes I would just stand there listening to him, wondering how in the world one person could remember so much information. But as I got older and spent more time around Western Pennsylvania basketball, I began to understand something.

Deuce wasn’t just some random guy who showed up at basketball games. He was part of the culture.

 

EVERY REAL HOOPER AND COACH KNEW DEUCE

If you were involved in Western Pennsylvania basketball during Deuce’s era, you knew exactly who he was.

Players knew him. Coaches knew him. Officials knew him. Sportswriters knew him.

He was a fixture at basketball games throughout the region, sitting at the scorer’s table or somewhere nearby with his yellow legal pad, recording statistics and keeping track of everything happening on the court.

And he wasn’t doing it for attention. He genuinely loved high school athletics. Deuce started keeping statistics as a teenager in the 1950s and continued doing it for more than half a century.

Think about that for a minute.

More than 50 years of attending games, recording numbers, following players, and preserving the history of high school sports. He reportedly kept statistics at more than 11,000 basketball games at various levels and approximately 3,000 football games. He also attended 58 consecutive WPIAL basketball championship finals and 51 consecutive PIAA basketball championship finals.

Those numbers are unbelievable.

Most people would have trouble remembering what happened at a basketball game they attended last week. Deuce could tell you what happened in a game decades earlier.

And he probably had the statistics to back it up.

 

HE MADE PLAYERS FEEL LIKE THEIR ACCOMPLISHMENTS MATTERED

One thing I appreciate more today than I did when I was younger is how much Deuce cared about the athletes.

When you’re a young basketball player, you’re focused on winning games, scoring points, getting recruited, and trying to make something of yourself. You don’t always appreciate the people who are paying attention to your journey.

But Deuce was paying attention.

He followed players from different schools, different classifications, and different generations. He didn’t need social media, highlight videos, or recruiting websites to know who the great players were. He was actually in the gym watching them. And when he approached you, he made sure you knew that he recognized what you were accomplishing.

Looking back, I appreciate the fact that he knew so much about my career.

He took the time to follow what I was doing at Penn Hills, and he was genuinely excited to talk to me about it. There was nothing fake about that man.

He loved basketball, and he loved the people who played it.

 

WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA BASKETBALL HAD ITS OWN WALKING HISTORY BOOK

Today, we have websites, online archives, digital statistics, and social media pages dedicated to preserving high school sports history.

But Deuce was doing that work long before any of those things existed.

He was keeping track of games when everything had to be written down by hand. His yellow legal pad was his version of a database. He recorded information because he wanted to know it, remember it, and share it with other people who loved sports as much as he did.

He also served as an official scorer at WPIAL basketball championships and some PIAA playoff games, and his statistical knowledge became a valuable resource for members of the local sports media.

Deuce was so recognizable around Western Pennsylvania athletics that his life and dedication to sports statistics even became the subject of a documentary.

But what made him special wasn’t simply the number of games he attended or the statistics he collected.

It was his personality.

He was loud. He was enthusiastic. He could talk your ear off. He might approach you like he had known you his entire life, even if you had never met him before. And once he started talking basketball, there was no telling when the conversation would end.

He was one of those people you had to experience for yourself to fully understand.

There was nobody else quite like him.

 

GIVING DEUCE HIS FLOWERS

As I continue writing about Western Pennsylvania basketball history, I want to make sure the people who helped build and preserve that history receive their recognition.

We spend so much time celebrating the players who scored the points and the coaches who won the championships.

And rightfully so.

But the people who dedicated their lives to documenting those accomplishments deserve recognition, too. Deuce was one of those people.

He wasn’t out there scoring 30 points or cutting down the nets after a championship victory. He was the man sitting at the scorer’s table, writing everything down, making sure those accomplishments weren’t forgotten.

And for someone like me, who now spends so much time writing about former athletes and preserving the history of Western Pennsylvania sports, I have an even greater appreciation for what he did.

Deuce was preserving our basketball history long before I ever thought about creating DrewSchifino.com.

He understood that the games, the players, and the accomplishments mattered. And he dedicated much of his life to making sure they were remembered.

 

THERE WILL NEVER BE ANOTHER DEUCE

Lawrence “Deuce” Skurcenski passed away in 2014, but his presence remains part of Western Pennsylvania basketball history.

I can still picture him walking up to me, extending his hand, talking a mile a minute, and telling me some crazy statistic about my career or another player from the WPIAL. At the time, I didn’t fully understand who I was dealing with.

Now I do.

He was a great man who had a genuine passion for high school athletics and the people involved in them. And when you talk about the history of Western Pennsylvania basketball, you cannot leave his name out of the conversation.

The legendary players and coaches helped make this region’s basketball history.

Deuce helped make sure that history was remembered.

Rest in peace, Deuce.

You were truly one of a kind.