It concerns two anonymous people--a basketball coach and a talented prospect he was interested in recruiting.

"Do you think you can get him?" someone asked the coach.

"I don’t know," he answered. "But I may have an advantage"

"What’s that?" the other guy asked.

"I sleep with his mother," the coach explained.

Which leads me to Kanaskie, who is in his seventh season as Drake’s coach, and a player he may want to recruit in a couple of years.

The kid’s name?

Kevin Kanaskie.

Kevin just happens to be a 6-1 sophomore who starts at point guard for Dowling High School.

And, by the way, Kevin isn’t the only high school basketball player in the Kanaskie home. Nor is he the oldest.

The other is Kristin, Kevin’s sister, who is a 5-5 senior on the girls’ team at Valley.

It turns out Dana Altman, who has had great success building a strong program at Creighton with talent from Iowa, was in the neighborhood recently to watch a game Kevin played at Johnston. Kurt Kanaskie attended the same game.

"Altman was probably looking at Kevin, but he’s only a sophomore, of course, and there were some other players in that Dowling-Johnston game that he was there to see, too," Kurt said.

If you’re like me, you’re wondering how it happened that Kevin Kanaskie and Kristin Kanaskie are playing at different schools in West Des Moines.

"Well, Valley is a big school," their dad explained. "There are 650 students in Kristin’s class. Our son’s class at Dowling has 288. He needed a smaller class for discipline and academics. And that doesn’t mean I’m trying to say anything bad about Valley.

"Kevin played in Dowling’s AAU basketball feeder system when he was younger, and I think it has worked out well for him."

With his busy schedule and his kids at different schools, Kurt doesn’t get the chance to watch their high school games as much as he’d prefer.

"I’d like to see them play more games, but they’re doing it for themselves, not to please their parents," Kurt said.

"Kristin and Kevin don’t care about individual statistics," Kurt said. "They’ve been brought up to never blame other players or their coaches. They want to make sure their teams are in the best positions to win. They've been hearing that since they were babies."

Kristin and Kevin get their athletic talent naturally. Kurt was a basketball player at LaSalle, and his wife, Joyce, was a softball and field hockey player there.

Kristin plans to attend Drake after graduating from Valley.

"She’s going to study education," Kurt said. "That surprises us because she could have gone anywhere in the country academically, but she chose Drake because of the great reputation of the school of education."

Incidentally, there’s still another prospective athlete in the Kanaskie home.

"He’s Kyle, who is a second-grader," Kurt said. "He looks more like a football player. But who knows?"