Some athletes consider it a place to buy time.

Before they realize it, they are enjoying quality time.

How can it be anything but when you're around Dick Hartung every day?

That's what the basketball players at Butler County Community College get to experience. They benefit from Hartung's vast experience in the sport as well as from his quick wit and boisterous personality.

Not a bad deal while “buying time” at a junior college.

When Hartung returned to the Pioneer bench to coach the men's and women's basketball teams in 2010-11, all he did was guide the women's squad to a 17-11 record, Region XX championship and sixth place in the NJCAA national tournament.

Butler graduate Katresa Savisky and Karns City graduate Ashley Campbell were stalwarts on that team who went on to play basketball at Point Park.

Six years later, Hartung is guiding another BC3 women's team toward possible postseason glory. And this group has two players — Butler graduate Julia Baxter and Ford City grad Christina Davis — who may wind up at four-year programs.

They've discovered an effective way to buy time.

So, too, has Knoch graduate Austin Miller.

While the Pioneers have only two wins to their credit so far this season, Miller continues to be one of the top scoring threats in all of NJCAA Division III. He averaged nearly 25 points per game last season and is over the 20-point mark per contest again in 2014-15.

Butler graduate Jake Anderson struck for 23 points, 18 rebounds and 10 blocked shots in a recent win over Pitt-Titusville and is developing into a good inside complement to Miller's outside skills.

Hartung inherited a BC3 men's program that failed to win a game in the previous two years. He posted four wins in his first season and won 15 games with the men's program last season.

He has won more than 300 games in 24 years of men's basketball coaching at BC3. His would-be assistant coach this season — Joe Lewandowski — left early in the campaign to take over the Butler High School girls program.

Kathy Wood stepped in to help out and the Pioneers just keep going.

That's how it goes with Hartung.

He can be loud on the court, but is very unassuming off it. He down plays any of his accomplishments, crediting the players for them instead.

Handed the task of coaching two college basketball teams simultaneously in 2010, he even shrugged that off.

“General Robert E. Lee was 54 when he led the Army of Northern Virginia into battle against the North in 1861,” Hartung said at the time. “I'm 54 now ... If he can do that, I can coach a couple of basketball teams.”

The wins and losses attached to this guy don't even matter.

Learning life's lessons from him do.

Buying time? It's time well spent.

John Enrietto is sports editor of the Butler Eagle.