Austin Claunch is 31 years old, 800 miles from home and lying in a dorm room bed at 2 a.m. waiting for the college students chatting outside his door to go to bed.
It’s a scene that he could never have imagined a month ago, but Claunch is fine with it. Well, mostly.
“I was tired as hell this morning,” he says through a laugh.
These aren’t ordinary college students making a bit too much noise in a hallway. They’re men's basketball players from Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, La., and Claunch is their coach. And for the last 17 days, they’ve called the eighth floor of Palmer Hall at Eastern Kentucky home after evacuating from Thibodaux due to Hurricane Ida.