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The first thing most basketball people noticed about John Bucci was how big his influence was on the court.

He had a big, booming voice.

He had a big love for the game and a bigger knack for teaching it.

He had a big heart.

So there will be a giant void throughout Northeastern Pennsylvania when the girls and boys high school basketball season opens this week.

“A lot of folks who didn’t know him thought he was gruff,” said University of Scranton athletic director Dave Martin, a former men’s — and briefly women’s — head coach at Misericordia University. “Deep down, he had a heart of gold.”

That heart stopped beating when Bucci unexpectedly passed away earlier this week at the age of 57. The volume of mourners is expected to be so large, his viewing will be held from 2 to 6 p.m. today at Bucci’s Backcourt Hoops facility in Scranton.

It was Bucci who produced one of the biggest sports moments in Lackawanna County’s recent history when he took Bishop Hannan and Gerry McNamara all the way to a Class A state championship.

But Bucci was a lot more than just a basketball coach. And much more than simply a Scranton guy.

He was one of those guys who seemed to make county borders disappear, as his reach extended throughout Luzerne County and beyond. Through his AAU programs, Backcourt Hoops and JB Hoops and Riverfront Sports that came together under JB United, Bucci guided kids from Wilkes-Barre and Dallas and Hazleton Area and a lot of places in between to better places. In their games and in their education.

“If he wanted to yell at you, you could certainly hear him,” said Ryan Krawczeniuk, the former Meyers High School and East Stroudsburg University standout who played and still coaches in Bucci’s AAU programs and is currently an assistant men’s coach at Marywood. “He was demanding. But I never felt a coached cared more about me. Even though I have never been yelled at more by a coach. I knew he cared.”

That became clear from the conversations he engaged in with players like Krawczeniuk, one of the best big-game players to come through Pat Toole’s storied program at Meyers.

“That’s why I kept coming back to him,” said Krawczeniuk said of Bucci and the JB Sports basketball programs he’s been involved with for more than a decade. “It wasn’t always basketball with him. Eighty percent of our conversations, they had nothing to do with basketball. We’d talk about life. He was always teaching me how to be a man, more than just a basketball player.

“He was like a second father to me.”

Those who had the opportunity to play for Bucci didn’t give it a second thought.

“People were just drawn to him,” Martin said, “more because of the success he had coaching at St. Mary’s and then at Bishop Hannan and the reputation he had as a great coach. Great personality. And the opportunities he was giving young people to play, I think that appealed to everybody. Once you met him, you couldn’t help but fall in love with him.

“People saw he cared.”

What they often didn’t see is how much.

Martin tells a story from his old coaching days at Misericordia, where he coached a trio of players in the early 1990s who came out of Bucci’s success story at Bishop Hannan.

The college basketball team was heading out to play in Iowa, on a trip that wasn’t funded through the university but was paid for through fundraisers. And those who fell short had to make up the rest of the cost on their own.

“He gave 250 dollars towards that trip, so two players could go,” Martin said, “and insisted that nobody would ever know where it came from. That’s the kind of guy he was.”

It wasn’t just former AAU players who felt Bucci’s generosity, or his warmth.

“He did so much for young people,” said Martin, who counted himself among Bucci’s friends for over a quarter of a century. “He never wanted cost to be the reason someone couldn’t join his (AAU) teams. He would never give anythning for free, but kids who couldn’t afford it, he’d give them an opportunity to work it off — by coaching one of his teams or working at JB Sports. Booch was very loyal.”

That loyalty didn’t end when his life did.

The players and coaches who made so much of that life flourish get to visit him one more time today at Backcourt Hoops. If they listen hard, they will hear his corrective criticism, constant care and loyal words of love for them embedded in the walls of the place.

John Bucci made sure those things will always remain.

Paul Sokoloski covers area sports for the Times Leader. You may reach him at 570-991-6392, at [email protected] or on Twitter @SokoloskiSports