SYRACUSE - It's been said time and time again - experience is the best teacher.

For fifth-year coach Phil Mishler and his Wawasee High School boys basketball team, Larry Liddle is certainly an experienced teacher.

Though he is Wawasee's junior varsity coach, working in his fourth year with the Warriors after Mishler called him and offered him an assistant's position, what some people who don't know who the silver-haired coach is, Liddle is less than a week away from induction into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame.

Come next week, Liddle will be a member of the same hall of fame as Oscar Roberston, Larry Bird and John Wooden.

"When you see who is there (in the Hall of Fame), you have to look at yourself and ask, 'Am I deserving of this?'" said Liddle, who has 618 career wins between his decades of being a head coach at the high school level and his almost 20-year run at Purdue-Calumet. "John Wooden, Oscar Robertson, Larry Bird, they're all in there. It's a very humbling experience."

Wawasee's varsity boys team won a regional championship for the first time in school history Saturday, upending No. 2 Bellmont 73-64.

Tomorrow, the Warriors will battle No. 7 Plymouth in the Huntington 3A Semistate, with the winner playing the following Saturday in the state finals at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis against either No. 1 Washington or Indianapolis Roncalli.

Without question, Liddle's experience as a former head coach is an added bonus for Mishler and his Warriors.

Liddle's record speaks for itself, and though he doesn't come across as an arrogant man at all, he brings to the table a been-there, done-that attitude.

"You're talking about a guy going into the Hall of Fame," said Wawasee assistant coach Randy Aalbregtse, who himself has 30-plus years coaching experience and who has been in the Warrior program in some capacity since 1989. "He brings everything to the table. He has a tremendous amount of knowledge and does a great job working with kids and young coaches."

Said Mishler, whose Warriors take a 20-6 record into this weekend's semistate, "I'm thankful that we have both Coach Liddle and Coach Aalbregtse. There's 60-plus years experience between them. When you can bounce ideas off people that have 60 years of experience, that makes you feel comfortable. They're both truly unselfish."

While Aalbregtse has basically stayed in the area during his coaching tenure, having worked with either the boys or girls programs - high school and middle school - at East Noble, Prairie Heights, DeKalb and Wawasee, Liddle has been all around the state.

Barring Muncie Central, the state's leader in boys basketball state championships with eight, Liddle has been the head varsity coach at arguably two of the most recognizable high schools in all of Indiana - Milan and Marion.

Milan, is, of course, recognized because of Bobby Plump, who led the tiny Ripley County team to the 1954 state championship over Muncie Central, inspiring the motion picture "Hoosiers."

Liddle coached Milan from 1963-68. During that time, he led the Indians to a conference championship.

From 1976-81, Liddle coached at Marion, which is second in the state with seven state championships and the alma mater of current Portland Trail Blazers star Zach Randolph.

Under the direction of Liddle, the Giants were 113-22. In that eight-year span, he guided Marion to five sectional titles, five regional titles and the 1980 Final Four, where the Giants fell to eventual state champion Indianapolis Broad Ripple when Stacy Toran hit a buzzer beater in the semifinal game.

Marion defeated Jim Miller's Warsaw Tigers in the semifinal of the Fort Wayne Semistate en route to the Final Four.

Without question, Liddle's experience will be a plus when Wawasee battles the Plymouth Pilgrims, whose head coach Jack Edison also will be inducted in to the Hall of Fame this year, play for a state finals berth Saturday.

So how exactly did Liddle end up at Wawasee High School working as an assistant for Mishler?

"My wife and I have had a lake cottage here since the late 1970s," said Liddle, whose overall coaching record at the high school level is an impressive 338-122 (73.5 percent). "This was the place where we were going to retire. I was here for a year substituting at the school, and Phil called four years ago and asked if I'd take the reserve team."

Liddle described Mishler as a coach more out of the 1950s or '60s than a young coach today.

Mishler is the head coach and has his own ideas. Liddle's job is to offer advice.

"Phil is a coach who is eager to learn," said Liddle, who has also coached cross country and track. "He has his own ideas, but he runs things by the staff. He's not a coach who says, 'I'm not willing to change.' We're allowed to give a lot of feedback."

And rightfully so; experience is the best teacher.

Liddle graduated from Lawrenceburg High School in 1953. He missed out on his junior year in athletics with a health issue but competed in football, basketball and track as a senior.

After high school, he attended Hanover College, where he became the first athlete in the school's history to earn 12 letters.

At Hanover College, he was all-conference in track for three years, in football for two years and MVP of the basketball team.

Liddle has two children and five grandchildren in North Carolina and plans to retire there someday.

"We have two children and five grandchildren down there," said Liddle. "We have a house down there, everything but us."

The induction ceremony for this year's Hall of Fame class will be Wednesday in Indianapolis.

Among those joining Liddle and Edison in the Hall of Fame this year is former Notre Dame coach John MacLeod.

Note - More Wawasee coverage will appear in Saturday morning's edition. [[In-content Ad]]