The pregame ritual remained the same, all 26 years Steve Powell coached the McCaskey boys’ basketball team. The Red Tornado players would huddle up in the locker room before taking the court, do the 1-2-3 thing, then head out the door.

Powell and his three assistant coaches — Mike Mitchell, Earl “Papa” Boots and Willie McDowell — would stay behind before gathering together for a cheer of their own.

“Ours was just basically … ‘1-2-3 … Four Tops,’ ” Mitchell said the other day.

The nickname they had chosen for themselves has its roots with a Motown group of the 1950s (and one that is actually still in business). Mentioning the moniker in such a fashion, Mitchell said, was as good a way to start game night as any — “just lift it up to the sky, real boisterous cheer and get a chuckle out of it at the same time, every time we did it.”

Powell has departed their huddle, though certainly not their hearts, having died of cancer last Wednesday at the age of 68. The other three men, all McCaskey graduates, spent the entirety of Powell’s tenure alongside him (save McDowell’s brief stint as Elizabethtown’s head coach), reveling in the wins and agonizing over the losses. Cutting up on road trips and debating, well, everything. But ultimately pulling the rope in the same direction, always and forever.

McDowell was the offensive guy, Mitchell the defensive guy. And Boots? He said he was in charge of “human resources and the psychological part.”

But Powell was the unquestioned CEO, the guy who went 468-245 with nine Lancaster-Lebanon League championships and three District Three titles before retiring at the end of last season.

The man nicknamed “Bird” — for his wingspan when he was a sweet-shooting sniper at Chester High and Millersville — will be remembered for his loud sweaters and Kangol hats. For taking care of his players, on and off the court. (“He wanted the best for them,” Boots said.) For a courageous fight against oral cancer the last four years.

The other Three Tops recall him simply as a friend.

“His circle was small,” McDowell said. “There weren’t a lot of people in his circle. He took care of the people in his circle.”

Boots was the first to cross paths with him. While a senior at McCaskey he watched as Powell’s Chester team was routed by Ambridge in the 1967 state championship game in Hershey. A year later Powell looked on as Boots, playing in a scrimmage for Goldey Beacom College, ripped Pennsylvania Military College (now Widener) in Chester. (Powell would in fact later tell Boots that that display convinced him he didn’t want to go to PMC.)

Boots subsequently went into the Navy, but when he returned home on leave he had barely emerged from his dad’s car, still in uniform, when he saw that Powell and some other Millersville players had rented a house on their block along Christian Street.

“Hey, I know you,” Powell said.

So it was that a 50-year friendship was born.

“He was the Godfather, and I was the consigliere,” Boots said. “Our relationship was like that. I was the guy who kept him calmed down, and he was always willing to listen.”

McDowell and Mitchell — ‘78 and ‘83 graduates of McCaskey, respectively — eventually filled out the Four Tops, and a wild ride ensued. The Tornado won frequently and at times lost frustratingly, and Powell’s postgame rehashes tended to be peppered with sentences that began, “I told the kids …”

I suggested to Mitchell a few days ago that if Powell truly told the kids everything he said he told the kids, team meetings would have lasted three hours.

“We’ve been there before,” Mitchell said with a laugh. “One or two of those times may have been true.”

Powell coached some of the finest teams to ever play in the L-L League, and some of its best players — none better than Jerry Johnson, a 2001 graduate who is still playing overseas. His clubs were also part of some of the fiercest rivalries, notably one against Hempfield that culminated in a 1999-00 season that saw the Tornado beat the Knights for the Section One title, the Knights beat the Tornado for the league title and the Tornado take out the Knights for the district title.

The interesting part was that Powell and his Hempfield counterpart, Warren Goodling, grew closer as the schools’ games grew bigger. Goodling, who retired in 2010 after 25 years in charge, would visit with Powell on the bench before games — “It would help relieve the stress,” he said last week — and to this day he treasures their relationship, born as it was out of Goodling’s respect for a man who did “a very difficult job and put his heart and soul into it.”

Powell’s last great team was the 2015 state semifinalist, led by Kobe Gantz and backboned by Tyler Owens. But by then Powell could communicate only by writing on a whiteboard; oral cancer had forced surgeons to remove his tongue a year earlier.

He still made his thoughts known. On those occasions when Goodling showed up for McCaskey-Hempfield games as a fan, he would once again seek out Powell before the opening tip.

“When are you going to come help me?” he would scrawl on the whiteboard.

But the other Three Tops could see that his health was deteriorating.

“The last three years,” McDowell said, “were tough.”

“He tried to hang in there,” Boots said. “The cancer beat him down.”

McDowell last saw Powell about three weeks ago, when he visited him and his wife of 42 years, Gloria Campbell, at their home.

“Just to let him know that …” McDowell said, his voice catching. “Just to let him know I was there for him — him and Glo.”

Shortly after that Powell went into hospice care, in Mount Joy. Boots stopped by the Friday before last and found his friend sleeping peacefully, but returned two days later. Powell’s family had by then gathered around him, and he was alert, aware of everything that was being said.

“I felt good,” Boots said. “I was able to see him and get a response from him.”

Three days later, he was gone.

“I’m gonna miss him,” Boots said. “I will miss our friendship.”

A friendship, really, that was Tops.