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Although I've been fortunate to witness 13 UConn hoops national championships, and have enjoyed them all, this year was a little different.
My handle comes from where I grew up - Gurleyville Road, a short, but tough, bike ride away from UConn's campus (that damn hill after crossing the Fenton River went on forever). My Mom was going to UConn part time while she raised two kids and got herself through college with the slow and steady method of a few classes here and there. She made it - she graduated three years before I did (I went away to a private college, feeling I wanted to have a college experience away from home). She also had a couple jobs on campus, so I'd often head there after school, buy some baseball cards at Phil's, hit the Dairy Bar, leave my bike at mom's work, and ride the UConn buses around to maybe catch a soccer game in the fall or a baseball game in the spring. I was a UConn brat - the sort of kid that probably annoyed the hell out of some of you folks who went there (although I did learn that if I brought our spaniel (rhymes with soccer, filter doesn't like it) along with me, all the college girls would come up and pet him, which was a pretty big deal when you're 11 or 12). My Mom let me skip school for a day to greet the Men's Soccer team back after they won the 1981 national title (soccer was the big sport for Mansfield/Storrs kids back then) - and I somehow got caught right in the middle of a Joe Morrone interview with all these microphones around me. The back of my head was on all the local television stations, maybe the closest thing I've ever come to fame.
Anywho, I was all grown up by the time UConn got good in basketball, so all the national championships (both genders) started when I had moved away. My Mom, by brother and I would often exchange excited phone calls or emails for the big games (my mom was never much of a sports fan, but became one by proxy when my brother and I grew up rabid ones). I still remember being on the phone with her in 1999 and yelling at her when she said "we won" after Langdon traveled and there was still five seconds left. No Mom, not yet! Bad mojo! She's gotten better at those things.
I don't mean to be too much of a downer here, but she was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer in January, requiring an aggressive treatment of chemotherapy to start immediately (she's doing well at the moment - they've suspended chemo to let her get her strength back since the first 3 rounds worked effectively). My brother and I both live in California now, and both flew out to see her soon after (different weeks, to spread out our visits and give her a little extra support). January tends to be open in my work schedule, so it was pretty easy to fit it in. Even had pizza with Deepster back then, where I gave him all sorts of mojo ideas (well, no, that's actually not true - his genius is his own). But the rigors of chemo take their toll on anyone, and after my Mom had a few visits back and forth between her cancer treatment facility and the hospital when she needed closer monitoring, I started to look at my work schedule as to when I could come out for a few days, just for a little pick me up visit. Unfortunately, March is a really busy month workwise and almost impossible for me to travel, but my schedule opens up in April. The most clear stretch I had was April 7-10, so I booked a flight a while back (probably late February).
The college basketball schedule? Furthest thing from my mind. And whatever instinct I had for it would have probably led me to think that it would be a week after the Final Fours. 77-74 was March 29, after all. Nowadays it tends to be later and spill into the April 2-5 range, but April 7-10 just feels post-basketball season to me. Not that it would have made much of a difference either way, although if I had booked a later flight, I might have been in the air for 60-54 and would have had to pay the fee to get out earlier.
So as we got deeper into the tournament, probably after the Iowa State win, it suddenly dawned on me that I was going to be in Connecticut for both national championship games. The women of course, would probably be there, but the men still had some work to do. I started to think, wouldn't it be cool if both teams could make it that far? Nah - that's a tough road. Michigan State and Florida, both?
Well, you know the rest. We kept winning. Down 9 in the second half to Michigan State? No problem. Down 16-4 to Florida, bah, that's nothing. We made it. And for the first time, I got to watch two national championship games with my Mom, UConn '89, back home in Connecticut, after always being somewhere else for the first 11. And we won both (the second one was equally important, since my Mom majored in women's studies and has been a professional feminist, as she calls herself - we saw the Women's World Cup at Giants Stadium back in 1999, when she looked at the crowd of 70,000 and sneered, "when you were a kid, you said nobody wants to watch women's sports. Look at this place.").
Yes, the location of the television might not have been the way I would have planned it, especially when I let out a whooping yell at about 11:15 on Monday, possibly waking up heavily-medicated people in the cancer treatment facility. There may have also been some alarmed nurses, who are conditioned to leap forward with drugs at the sound of yelling. But they didn't complain - they were too amused by the crazy guy doing a random happy dance.
So a big personal shout out to Senhor Testiculo, dooooooomed, your lucky shirt, and whatever forces of mojo somehow arranged all my work schedules to make this the best week I had available to travel - so that I booked a flight without even realizing what might happen over those days. Pretty amazing it happened the way it did.
Hard to top 1999, but this just might have done it.
My handle comes from where I grew up - Gurleyville Road, a short, but tough, bike ride away from UConn's campus (that damn hill after crossing the Fenton River went on forever). My Mom was going to UConn part time while she raised two kids and got herself through college with the slow and steady method of a few classes here and there. She made it - she graduated three years before I did (I went away to a private college, feeling I wanted to have a college experience away from home). She also had a couple jobs on campus, so I'd often head there after school, buy some baseball cards at Phil's, hit the Dairy Bar, leave my bike at mom's work, and ride the UConn buses around to maybe catch a soccer game in the fall or a baseball game in the spring. I was a UConn brat - the sort of kid that probably annoyed the hell out of some of you folks who went there (although I did learn that if I brought our spaniel (rhymes with soccer, filter doesn't like it) along with me, all the college girls would come up and pet him, which was a pretty big deal when you're 11 or 12). My Mom let me skip school for a day to greet the Men's Soccer team back after they won the 1981 national title (soccer was the big sport for Mansfield/Storrs kids back then) - and I somehow got caught right in the middle of a Joe Morrone interview with all these microphones around me. The back of my head was on all the local television stations, maybe the closest thing I've ever come to fame.
Anywho, I was all grown up by the time UConn got good in basketball, so all the national championships (both genders) started when I had moved away. My Mom, by brother and I would often exchange excited phone calls or emails for the big games (my mom was never much of a sports fan, but became one by proxy when my brother and I grew up rabid ones). I still remember being on the phone with her in 1999 and yelling at her when she said "we won" after Langdon traveled and there was still five seconds left. No Mom, not yet! Bad mojo! She's gotten better at those things.
I don't mean to be too much of a downer here, but she was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer in January, requiring an aggressive treatment of chemotherapy to start immediately (she's doing well at the moment - they've suspended chemo to let her get her strength back since the first 3 rounds worked effectively). My brother and I both live in California now, and both flew out to see her soon after (different weeks, to spread out our visits and give her a little extra support). January tends to be open in my work schedule, so it was pretty easy to fit it in. Even had pizza with Deepster back then, where I gave him all sorts of mojo ideas (well, no, that's actually not true - his genius is his own). But the rigors of chemo take their toll on anyone, and after my Mom had a few visits back and forth between her cancer treatment facility and the hospital when she needed closer monitoring, I started to look at my work schedule as to when I could come out for a few days, just for a little pick me up visit. Unfortunately, March is a really busy month workwise and almost impossible for me to travel, but my schedule opens up in April. The most clear stretch I had was April 7-10, so I booked a flight a while back (probably late February).
The college basketball schedule? Furthest thing from my mind. And whatever instinct I had for it would have probably led me to think that it would be a week after the Final Fours. 77-74 was March 29, after all. Nowadays it tends to be later and spill into the April 2-5 range, but April 7-10 just feels post-basketball season to me. Not that it would have made much of a difference either way, although if I had booked a later flight, I might have been in the air for 60-54 and would have had to pay the fee to get out earlier.
So as we got deeper into the tournament, probably after the Iowa State win, it suddenly dawned on me that I was going to be in Connecticut for both national championship games. The women of course, would probably be there, but the men still had some work to do. I started to think, wouldn't it be cool if both teams could make it that far? Nah - that's a tough road. Michigan State and Florida, both?
Well, you know the rest. We kept winning. Down 9 in the second half to Michigan State? No problem. Down 16-4 to Florida, bah, that's nothing. We made it. And for the first time, I got to watch two national championship games with my Mom, UConn '89, back home in Connecticut, after always being somewhere else for the first 11. And we won both (the second one was equally important, since my Mom majored in women's studies and has been a professional feminist, as she calls herself - we saw the Women's World Cup at Giants Stadium back in 1999, when she looked at the crowd of 70,000 and sneered, "when you were a kid, you said nobody wants to watch women's sports. Look at this place.").
Yes, the location of the television might not have been the way I would have planned it, especially when I let out a whooping yell at about 11:15 on Monday, possibly waking up heavily-medicated people in the cancer treatment facility. There may have also been some alarmed nurses, who are conditioned to leap forward with drugs at the sound of yelling. But they didn't complain - they were too amused by the crazy guy doing a random happy dance.
So a big personal shout out to Senhor Testiculo, dooooooomed, your lucky shirt, and whatever forces of mojo somehow arranged all my work schedules to make this the best week I had available to travel - so that I booked a flight without even realizing what might happen over those days. Pretty amazing it happened the way it did.
Hard to top 1999, but this just might have done it.
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