That was strange, seeing Keith Spencer enter the ‘Iolani gym dressed in Saint Louis blue last night.

The Crusaders basketball head coach will always be a Raider in my mind, a key component of a dynamic ‘Iolani group winning its long-awaited state basketball championship in 1983, when they were seniors. Spencer, Scott Laboy, Mike Fetters, Frank Lutu and Al Tufono comprised the core of one of the most talented classes of athletes Hawaii high school sports fans have ever seen. Tufono was injured during basketball season and replaced in the lineup by junior Roland Ruff.

After the rest of them graduated, Ruff was the only one of those guys to participate in something very special as a player: the ‘Iolani Classic, which started up the next December, the brainchild of the Raiders’ coach, Glenn Young.

It’s now in its 27th year.

"He got the idea when we played in the Las Vegas Classic the year before," Spencer said. "It’s great that it’s still going after all these years. It’s really helped the level of play here. It shows our kids what they can do if they work hard."

I’ll buy that to a point. Basketball’s a sport where hard work can take you only so far if you don’t have some raw ability. Those with natural gifts of height and leaping ability will usually dominate, and it’s probably disheartening to some kids to be on the wrong end of a 70-point loss.

It’s up to the coaches to rebuild their players’ and teams’ confidence level after they take lickin’s. They often succeed, and benefit from this tournament more than just being able to say five years from now they shared the court with an NBA star.

GLENN YOUNG IS a 1959 ‘Iolani grad; he said no one knows his age and made me promise to not reveal it, so you do the math. If you are one of his students, you do the computer science. He’s been teaching it at his alma mater since programming meant stacking cards with holes punched in them in the right order.

When he conceived this tournament, he never expected it to grow into a showcase for some of the best teams and players in the nation. "We initially started with the idea of improving the level of basketball in Hawaii," Young said yesterday outside the packed gym. "Over the years, it’s really grown."

It didn’t take long. By 1987, the top two teams in the country according to USA Today met in the championship game. It was so big they had to move it to the Blaisdell. A kid named Bobby Hurley led No. 2 St. Anthony of New Jersey over No. 1 Tolentine of the Bronx. In OT. It makes the top 10 list of basketball games played in Hawaii, at any level.

Young said the tipping point came in 1985, when he convinced Stu Vetter to bring his Flint Hill Prep powerhouse from Virginia. That team had Dennis Scott, a 6-foot-7 high school version of Magic Johnson — with a better outside shot. We saw Scott at the peak of his powers, dazzling with his passes and his smile on fast breaks. He became a 3-point specialist at Georgia Tech and with the Orlando Magic.

Like the game itself, the ‘Iolani Classic has gone international.

Yesterday, I saw a team from Tsinghua High School in China called the Dragons get slain by the Knights from Lexington Catholic, Ky., 63-47. The Chinese were tall and skilled, but tentative. Kentucky played tenacious D that Jack Black would be proud of, a kid named Scott Schuette (pronounced "shootie") lit it up from outside, and Kentucky-bound baseball player Taylor Martin scored 22.

It was one of four games yesterday. There are 24 more to come, with the championship on Tuesday. Glenn Young is everywhere at once, doing what tournament directors do.

He seems more youthful than in 1983, before the first ‘Iolani Classic.

May he be around to direct at least 27 more.