As requested, a history of the March Yard hangings for the young blood. Apologies for any blurry memories. Feel free to correct me where I may have slipped with some of the history here.
March 1999. After falling short the year before, UConn went into this season and the postseason on a mission. When they won the Big East Tourney over St John’s the hype was higher than it’d ever been. Someone on the Yard made a Boneyard ESPN Pizza Hut Bracket Challenge. You could see the standings and total pts and everyone’s prediction of the final champion. 5 people on the Yard picked Duke to win it all. Dogfather, a beloved regular at the time, led that charge and backed it up with the lame reasoning that he wanted to win the entire challenge and get free pizzas. Dove was also one of the Dukie 5 and to this day has never shown a single bit of remorse. Maybe that’s why I hate him so much. I don’t remember the others. Maybe someone else will.
From there, I recall being one of the main group that outed them and relentlessly ridiculed them for it. At this point, I don’t even remember what their punishment was at the time, but we fancied up a quick mock trial and slammed a guilty charge down on them. UConn wins 6 straight, takes home their first title and the rest is history.
And it sorta just took off with a life of it’s own. We’d make the postseason, I’d drum up a reason and a poster, hang them and give them a sentence and the trophy case got really full.
If I had to say, the method to my madness on choosing who to hang is as follows:
- It helped to pick someone who didn’t like it. The more they kick and scream? The better it is for the team. The more they refuse to comply? The more whipped up the Yard masses got and somehow that seemed to result in titles.
- The punishment needed to be catchy. Unique. Relevant. Have some sizzle. Some years were better than others. Some were flops. Some were nuclear.
Winning. The year where Charlie Sheen was the theme was 2011, I don’t even remember who got hung. It was the year he flew off the rails and had those crazy tiger blood quotes and was high and banging multiple adult film stars at once. The whole #winning thing just seemed to click and they won 5 games in 5 days with Kemba playing like it was a video game. The Yard was flooded with Sheen and Winning memes. And there was one day where the back page of the NY Post had a picture of UConn or Kemba and in the bottom right hand corner was a headline about Charlie Sheen and I always remembered that being cool.
Senhor. 2014. I felt this team underachieved. I think they were like #15 in the country heading into the tourney and, I’ll admit….I have never been Bazz fan. There was something about him that never clicked with me. All year long, I was frustrated and they got blown out by Louisville 81-48 the last game of the regular season. During that season, I think it was Prankster who found this mascot for testicular cancer, Senhor Testiculo. Every game he’d give an award for the player who had the “biggest balls”. I hated that too and the mascot was hideous.
So, before the Big East tournament, I posted a rant (which I wish I had) how this team and Shabazz in particular, didn’t have the balls to make a serious run. Wow. The photoshops and memes and crazy content came in like an avalanche (tcf15 for MVP there). And, to this day, I don’t know how the heck it all happened. There are articles on it if you google “Boneyard Senhor Testiculo” and the team started doing the dance on the sidelines where they were juggling their big swinging balls. If you click the YouTube video link here:
You’ll see a crowd of people all doing what, I have to assume, is the Senhor dance. I mean, in my heart, I really do think it was that sentence that started the fire but I’ll never know.
