This winter marks the 10th anniversary of my favorite sentence I have ever typed here at the ol' Day Paper:

"The Coast Guard basketball bus, with the driver claiming to be Reggie Jackson's cousin, hit a house on the way home from the Elite Eight as Saturday night became Sunday morning."

Yep. They hit a house.

Hard to believe it's been 10 years since the most memorable weekend in the history of Coast Guard athletics. The Bears, the Little Team That Almost Did, came within an eyelash of the Final Four ... and then got home at 5:30 the next morning because the team bus clipped a house.

They celebrated this past weekend, some of the old Bears did, awash in the memories from the 2008 season that survived the decade and will endure many more.

Coast Guard spent the weekend in suburban Philadelphia at Ursinus College, site of the NCAA regional. After the Bears defeated Div. III power Rochester in the Sweet 16, yours truly was eavesdropping on a pair of Rochester players headed back to the team bus.

"We just lost to bleeping Coast Guard!" one said to the other, underscoring the depth of the upset.

This was a night after the Rochester coach big-timed Coast Guard coach Pete Barry at a restaurant, barely giving Barry a nod. I am not allowed to print what Barry said in rebuttal.

The Bears came within a possession of defeating Ursinus in the Elite Eight game, before losing in overtime. A gut buster that didn't fit the rest of the laughs all weekend.

Then the fun began.

The ride home.

Reggie's cousin left Ursinus the same way all weekend. Except here. He knew a shortcut.

But Reggie's cousin missed a turn. Or took it too quickly. He clipped a concrete abutment to someone's house, a cement porch-looking thing that sat absurdly close to the road. If nothing else, it indicated that the owner must have paid off some schmo from planning & zoning.

Something happened to a ball bearing and a tire on the bus.

This happened after Reggie's cousin was given bad directions for the trip from Connecticut to Pennsylvania, thus getting the bus lost in Trenton.

Irony: It was a Peter Pan bus. Nobody knew at the time that Peter Pan's immortal line, "I'm flying!" was also code for the safer method of transportation.

The crash only delayed the four-hour trip back to Connecticut for three hours.

While awaiting Mr. Fix It, two Pennsylvania police officers escorted the bus to the parking lot of a Wawa, so the passengers could at least eat something. Reggie's cousin parked the bus about a free throw's distance (and downwind) from a compost heap that sat in the back of Wawa's parking lot.

Nobody bothered to ask why there was a compost heap in the back of Wawa's parking lot.

Sixteen players, two coaches, two equipment managers, a sports information director, a Coast Guard lieutenant, a trainer, a Coast Guard sailor and one sports columnist then entered Wawa. All ordered deli sandwiches, thereby occupying the cashier's time, thereby creating a line longer than Paradise By The Dashboard Light.

Townies from whatever town the Wawa occupied walked in for a loaf of bread and nearly dropped their teeth when they saw the line to pay had formed a complete circle.

Word leaked that a new bus was coming. But then, word also leaked Mr. Fix It was coming in an hour, two hours earlier.

Barry opted for a liverwurst sandwich and milk, exactly the fare he always thought would punctuate the greatest postseason run of his career.

Mr. Fix It arrived.

I wouldn't have traded the experience for anything.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro