Solid-gold Saturday<br/><span class='hl2'>From Pocola to Millwood miracle, action is tops</span>

I've been going to the Big House for the state basketball tournaments since 1971.

Hard to think of the arena as ever being new, and maybe it never was. It seems the same now as when I was a kid. Some souls are born old; why can't buildings be the same?

Anyway, my dad took us to the night session of Championship Saturday back in '71. Okmulgee beat Ada that night, a game that escapes me and I had to look up. But Tulsa Central beat Tulsa Washington, and that one I remember. Henry Johnson, a big ol' boy, led Central to the title and then went to Penn. Hope he did well for himself.

That was a lot of games ago. Almost 40 years I've been going to the Big House for state. Not every game. Not every session. Heck, not even every year. Sometimes life gets in the way.

But I've gone most years. To dozens of sessions. To hundreds of games.

And I've never seen anything like Saturday.

Just when you thought high school sports had lost the power to enchant you, lost the ability to make you stand up and cheer, here came a confluence of remarkable games.

Pawnee's Keiton Page and Verdigris' Rotnei Clarke. Players for the ages. Prolific scorers who made history.

Sequoyah-Tahlequah's girls and Oklahoma Christian's boys, seeking the most consecutive state championships in Oklahoma history, only to lose. History denied.

And finally, Pocola-Walters. A finish for the ages.

All played in the most frenzied of atmospheres. The Big House packed to the rafters; more than 10,000 for the afternoon session, maybe as many as 13,000 for the night session, with 500 waiting in line to enter when some misguided souls dared leave.

Six games. Four epics. Four unforgettables. Four games we'll be talking about 20 years from now, when the Big House hopefully still will be hosting ballteams and memories.

"Quite a day, wasn't it,” said Oklahoma sports historian Ray Soldan, who started covering high schools for The Oklahoman in the early 1950s and now is a stat-keeper for tournament games.

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