Senior night, 34 years ago (dream season)

[StllH8L8ner]

True unless you experienced it you can’t imagine how great that season was. It was unexpected because we lost so much from the previous disapointing year.
I was in Hartford in the spring of 1989 as Andrew Gaze put a dagger through our NCAA dreams with a buzzer beating three . That Seton Hall team lost a heartbreaking NCAA finals . The Big East was brutal.
I was at the GT and Syracuse games in Hartford. The pressure we put on their guards was relentless. Never. have seen that since . They had no rim protection to cover errors .
That team had two first team , AZHuskie , UConn All time defensive players .
A second team player and two honorable mentions that how good they played D.
Cuse had Derrick Coleman and Billy Owen’s . They weren’t good they were great
Georgetown had Alonzo Mourning and Mutumbo
Coleman was the number 1 pick in the NBA draft and if not for injuries would be among the best forwards ever to play .
and I believe both GT twin towers are HOF
The best basketball players were in college then it was a different era.
Yet we tied with Cuse for first place unbelievably then
got the bad draw in the Big East tourney
playing GT and Cuse on successive days. But managed to beat them both for our first Big East Tournament Championship.
You couldn’t come closer to the treasured FF than they achieved . Love those guys.

Yep, GTown and Cuse were on top of the college hoop world and everyone I was in middle school with had something with a Hoya or fat Orange thing on it. Everyone looked at me like I had two heads when I walked in with my UConn starter jacket (which I still have, shout out mom who keeps everything) purchased from the Starter outlet in New Haven. Big Monday had a must see game every week.

Those years also had some very punchable faces in the Big East in Darren Morningstar from Pitt, Marty Conlan at PC, Robert Werdann from SJ, along with Jayson Williams before he shot his limo driver.

I can’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning but those games are burned into my memory like it was a short time ago.

 

[Giscombe12]

If you haven’t already, I would love to include your memories of The Dream Season in the forthcoming Fan Memories episode of The Dream Season podcast. These are gold!

UConn's Dream Season: An Oral History

 

[Stew Crew]

Johnnie Selvie

Justin Brown, the Australian is a close second to Suhr. I sat near the UConn bench during the 2001 NIT games at Gampel. Brown tried dribbling the ball and turned it over. Calhoun screams, "You are not a point guard!" there were only a few thousand people there so everyone heard it clearly. But give the kid credit. He stayed 4 years.

 

[Stew Crew]

I thought that was him on the bench and forgot to look to verify. He certainly did not back down to anyone a beast on the boards. Even against Alonzo and that huge Georgetown team. Nice catch.

Toraino is by far the scariest individual I ever saw on campus. He walked into McMahon dining hall one day. Black leather jacket. Black ski cap with a tray completely filled with food. People just cleared out as he walked through. He sat alone. No one would go anywhere near his table.

 

[Edward Sargent]

I thought that was him on the bench and forgot to look to verify. He certainly did not back down to anyone a beast on the boards. Even against Alonzo and that huge Georgetown team. Nice catch.

He and Rod Sellers also didnt back down from Shaq in our rout of LSU in the tournament

 

[Squeeze]

there are more men in suits/ties than in uconn gear

 

[maxw]

Some more pics from that night:

 

[Bboy Lace]

High top fades were in full effect!

 

[maxw]

Tip off, Sellers wins it. BTW, if you were at the game, and in students' section, you should look for yourself in the next few photos.

 

[maxw]

A good look at the students' section:

 

[maxw]

Coach Calhoun:

 

[Giscombe12]

A good look at the students' section:

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Would you mind if I shared these on my Dream Season social feeds?

 

[maxw]

Some old timers may remember the old Memorial Stadium on campus, right next to Gampel.

UConn played its first night football game there in 1989, I still have the t-shirt that says "I was there when the lights went on!".

Here are a couple of pics from that night, you can see the newly erected, massive Gampel dome in the background.

 

[WestHartHusk]

Some old timers may remember the old Memorial Stadium on campus, right next to Gampel.

UConn played its first night football game there in 1989, I still have the t-shirt that says "I was there when the lights went on!".

Here are a couple of pics from that night, you can see the newly erected, massive Gampel dome in the background.

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Old timers?!? They were there in 2001.

 

[metsfan2323]

Ten deep. Toraino, hero of the BET, slayer of Coleman, Mourning, and Mutombo, hadn't yet met his moment.

Toraino's performance in the BET came out of nowhere and was amazing. It would be like Singare making an impact in this year's BET.

 

[Hunt for 7]

The uniform shorts when they were still actually shorts. Look at these pictures and the pictures of our first championship team. The change is kind of funny. Khalid shorts were below his knees.

 

[Chin Diesel]

When you see who is on the bench and who was on the floor, that team was nine men deep. On the court Glenn, Smith, Burrell, Murray and Sellers. On the bench George, Henefeld, Cyrulik and DePriest. If only George had held onto that ball. We could have won it all. They may have been the best pressing team we ever had. At that point the skill sets and athleticism had not elevated to current levels for some of the mid major lower level teams. There were games with Nadav playing centerfield that we would just completely dominate the game with our harassing press. Nadav could bait the passer so well, he was truly special like an all pro safety looking one way getting the jump when the passer through it the other way. Thanks for sharing the memory.

Tate holds on to the ball and it would have been Arkansas and Nolan Richardson's 40 minutes of hell for the Final Four match up. That would have been so much fun to watch. Lee Mayberry, Todd Day, Oliver Miller.

If UConn got past them it meant The Shark's UNLV team with Greg Anthony, Stacey Augmon, Larry Johnson and Anderson Hunt.

I would have loved to have seen UConn team play either one of them.

 

[Stew Crew]

A good look at the students' section:

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My wife and I are in both of the photos.

 

[Martin]

Even without a title that year, my favorite season of all-time. Great memories….except for the last 2.6 seconds when I experienced my first true heartbreak and began my distain for all things Duke.

Any Uconn fans who were Yankees fans learned what it sometimes felt like to be a Red Sox fan here.

 

[StllH8L8ner]

The uniform shorts when they were still actually shorts. Look at these pictures and the pictures of our first championship team. The change is kind of funny. Khalid shorts were below his knees.

They started lengthening their shorts right after that. I remember going to a game when Donyell was a freshman and noticing how long and baggy his shorts were when he ran out of the tunnel. That was two years after Huskymania.

 

[Kolumbo]

Some more pics from that night:

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You can see Steve Pikiell and his brother Tim Pikiell facing the camera just above DePriest's head.

 

[Stinger92860]

A friend and I got family tickets from Marc Suhr for Senior Night during the dream season. Sadly, families didn't travel long distances to visit their kids' senior nights during those days.

We sat right behind the players' bench for the first time. It was fun to watch coach Calhoun trying restrain himself in front of players' parents He was an intense man.

Here are a couple of photos from that game that I took with my Nikon point-and-shoot:

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How much did Coach Calhoun yell at Cyrulik that night and was Cyrulik’s mom & dad there? I had hear a rumor that was one of the reasons the parents seats were moved to the other side of the floor.

 

[maxw]

How much did Coach Calhoun yell at Cyrulik that night and was Cyrulik’s mom & dad there? I had hear a rumor that was one of the reasons the parents seats were moved to the other side of the floor.

F-bombs used to flow freely from coach's mouth

He was trying to be polite in front of the players' families, and I distinctly remember him trying to curtail himself, angrily gritting his teeth, a sight familiar to all who watched him in person or on TV. He did slip and muttered a few curses, quickly looking up at the parents' area to assess the damage.

My friend remembers coach yelling at Gwynn for some of the shots he took.

Don't remember which families were there that night.

 

[KembaRunner]

No one taught a 2-2-1 press better than Calhoun. I had a video of it on VHS and learned it from the GOAT himself when I first started coaching AAU. Such a difficult zone to run well, but absolutely stifling while having layers of safety nets when running it well.

Would love to see that video!

 

[Mike Honcho]

Toraino's performance in the BET came out of nowhere and was amazing. It would be like Singare making an impact in this year's BET.

Can you say more about this?