Soak this tweet in

[JohnFSilver]

March 24th 2006. I was in a bar in George Mason’s backyard at the time and let me tell you that it was not a lot of fun. There are plenty of people on this board who don’t think that kind of nightmare can happen to this team. It can. And we pass the ball infinitely better than they did but look back at that lineup.

Worst loss in UConn history. Gets worse every year away.

Two losses in my sports life get worse with age.

1. Yankees game 7 loss to Arizona
2. Losing to GM.

 

[jibsey]

Worst loss in UConn history. Gets worse every year away.

Two losses in my sports life get worse with age.

1. Yankees game 7 loss to Arizona
2. Losing to GM.

I'm right there with you on both.

 

[Gurleyman]

It took a long time before this forum stopped saying George F'in Mason.

Lack of ball handling with the suspension of AJ Price for the season. Austrie did well but he and Marcus were not enough. That loss of AJ was the only incident that nyhuskyfan/Gurleyman demonstrated an emotional negative reaction in his illustrious presence in this forum.

Rashad Anderson had some skin infection that was so serious he was hospitalized and for a long period. He fortunately recovered but it impacted his play the remainder of the season. He was definitely the best 3 pt shooter on the team prior to that illness.

Hilton Armstrong suffered an ankle or hamstring injury just prior to tournament. Was limited in his play but prior to the injury was playing some of the best ball of his career.

Yeah. That team is my weak spot. I was more mad at Marcus Williams (he was the older player and had his cousin/friend along stealing laptops) and thought we never should have brought him back. AJ wasn’t going to play that season anyway, I don’t think, after having brain surgery - but the suspension took that possibility away (and took his redshirt possibility away).

I kind of liked that team without Marcus, although our ceiling was lower - we scrapped and clawed a little bit when we only had Austrie and Rob Garrison … knowing we needed to fight on defense and fight for rebounds. We won in Maui (Denham at the buzzer) and we were still undefeated when Marcus joined, when we immediately became way more talented and better offensively. But from them on we thought we could just outscore teams and went soft, right from day one when we got drubbed by Marquette. Part of it was we couldn’t defend guards (a bigger problem than lacking a secondary ball handler was that we didn’t have a primary defender against ball handlers), but we also didn’t seem to have the same grit. We had a couple good games (a home win over Nova to split with them, and a game we beat Seton Hall by 40), but basically stunk the entire last month of the season. The loss to George Mason didn’t come from out of the blue - we were tied with a 10-20 Louisville team with a minute to go in the regular season finale. Then lost to a Syracuse team that was NIT bound at the time in a 1-8 game in the BET quarters. We learned our lesson so well from that loss that we needed to come back from 12 down to beat Albany in the 1-16 game. Then let a pedestrian 8 seed Kentucky team take us down to the wire. Then we needed a miracle to beat UW, which probably wouldn’t have been possible without Brandon Roy getting his fourth on a double tech.

Why did George Mason finally pull it off? We got zero defensive stops in the last 10 minutes (5 of regulation, 5 in OT) - or at least no stops that didn’t involve them missing free throws. With the Final Four on the line, we didn’t have the grit to dig in on defense for a single stop against a mid-major. We almost scored enough to pull it out anyway, but I’ve never considered that a vintage UConn team, despite the record (a healthy AJ likely would have solved that).

But it’s water under the bridge now. We have four - and the tradeoff for winning that many comes the occasional shocker as a favorite. Duke vs. Lehigh, Kentucky vs. Saint Peter’s, Kansas vs. VCU, etc. Or, to its largest extreme, Virginia vs. UMBC, followed by a nattie. When George Mason happened, we were only 2 years removed from winning - the 90s losses were harder to take before we got our first.

 

[Dove]

See my "One For The Thumb" thread.

 

[DMIL]

We would have won that road game had Dyson not gotten hurt.

100%

 

[Punkbo]

We absolutely would have beat UNC in 09

Reading this thread is so painful. The 2006 and 2009 teams were loaded and the outcomes were very disappointing. We were definitely the better team if we had a full roster against MSU. I’m less confident that we would have been the better team against UNC. We certainly would have had a legitimate chance to win, but UNC was very good that year.

 

[Mike Honcho]

March 24th 2006. I was in a bar in George Mason’s backyard at the time and let me tell you that it was not a lot of fun. There are plenty of people on this board who don’t think that kind of nightmare can happen to this team. It can. And we pass the ball infinitely better than they did but look back at that lineup.

I was at the game, at the Verizon Center in DC. 95% of the crowd was supporting George Mason, both due to the proximity of the school and the fact that they were heavy underdogs. They probably played Living on a Prayer 10+ times during that game. The escalators out of the arena were especially terrible, both with the loss settling in and thousands of happy fans gleefully terrorizing anyone in husky gear. Btw, Denham's 3 at the end felt just like the Arizona 3 in 2011 (there for that game, too). Both shots looked pure but were a little long.

On the flip side, I went to the Washington game two days earlier and that was one of my best live memories. It was a wild ride. Thank you Rashad for hitting that game tying 3 and then a clutch steal by Marcus Williams in OT to seal it.

 

[aburks41]

This is the point in each P6 game when we could have stopped scoring and still won every game.

Oregon: 13:14
Alabama: 4:22
Iowa State: 8:33
Oklahoma State: 6:56
Florida: 8:31
Butler: 8:12

Average: 8:17

Complete domination. I’ve never seen anything like this before

 

[Inyatkin]

Worst loss in UConn history. Gets worse every year away.

Two losses in my sports life get worse with age.

1. Yankees game 7 loss to Arizona
2. Losing to GM.

Yankees fans are something. 20 years later and still sad they couldn't win their fourth straight World Series.

George Mason was terrible, but '11 and '14 more than made up for it

 

[BigErnMcCracken]

George Mason was terrible, but '11 and '14 more than made up for it

Florida and Mississippi State were much worse losses to get over than George Mason for me. That '06 team played with fire from the Albany game forward. It was only a matter of time.

 

[Huskyforlife]

This is the point in each P6 game when we could have stopped scoring and still won every game.

Oregon: 13:14
Alabama: 4:22
Iowa State: 8:33
Oklahoma State: 6:56
Florida: 8:31
Butler: 8:12

Average: 8:17

Complete domination. I’ve never seen anything like this before

I need Purdue to lose right now. This is outrageous.

 

[August_West]

Florida and Mississippi State were much worse losses to get over than George Mason for me. That '06 team played with fire from the Albany game forward. It was only a matter of time.

Agreed ……Florida because we won that game with our all American at the FT line to seal it. . Killer.

Mississippi state because they sucked and we were playing in cement shoes while being best team in country. ( although Ricky getting hurt against Colgate hurt us bad , we still were the best team). Tgat game was like a bad dream you get after a bout of food poisoning.

 

[superjohn]

It could. But I was in the minority in thinking that squad with Gay was never an NC caliber team. I think the chemistry on this team is.

That team was devastating when they were on but they lacked that secondary ball handler and they decided to play their worst basketball at the end of the season which was rare for a UConn team. They looked amazing against a great Nova team near the end of the season but then coasted against USF, lost to Cuse right away in the Big East tournament (a team they should have handled easily) were down in the second half to 16 seed Albany, played like garbage in the second round and let Patrick Sparks go off letting a weak Kentucky team hang around until the very end. That UConn team should've lost to Washington in the sweet 16. It seemed like everyone was auditioning for themselves and for NBA scouts. I think Calhoun said as much.

There was a ton of drama surrounding the program for like 4 years there with AJ having the brain hemorrhage, the laptop thing with Williams and AJ, AJ blowing out his knee, Bynum declaring for the draft, Antonio Kellogg getting expelled, Nate Miles getting expelled and the fallout etc. If we had AJ there would for sure be another championship in Storrs and Nate Miles was the best offensive player on campus with that 08-09 team before everything went south for him and then Dyson tore his meniscus ending his season. Sticks was working at a metal plant for the first semester. As great as the 05-06 team could've been, the 08-09 team is probably the all-time what if team.

Those teams were awesome and devastating at times but I don't exactly miss the soap opera.

 

[Huskybass]

Agreed ……Florida because we won that game with our all American at the FT line to seal it. . Killer.

Mississippi state because they sucked and we were playing in cement shoes while being best team in country. ( although Ricky getting hurt against Colgate hurt us bad , we still were the best team). Tgat game was like a bad dream you get after a bout of food poisoning.

It wasn't just an All American on the line, but a guy that went 20 for 20 from the line in an earlier game.

 

[August_West]

It wasn't just an All American on the line, but a guy that went 20 for 20 from the line in an earlier game.

Twice that season I think!

 

[husky429]

The memory some of ya'll have for games is astounding. I barely remember who we beat last week, let alone decades ago.

 

[jpeakin]

Yankees fans are something. 20 years later and still sad they couldn't win their fourth straight World Series.

George Mason was terrible, but '11 and '14 more than made up for it

The reason that Yankee loss stung so hard for many people was not the fact that we are greedy fans, but it was the whole tie to what happened with 9/11 in NYC that year. At least I felt they were a feel-good story, playing for the city of NY as well as most of the rest of America - minus AZ, of course.

 

[Inyatkin]

Florida and Mississippi State were much worse losses to get over than George Mason for me. That '06 team played with fire from the Albany game forward. It was only a matter of time.

Plus in '06 we had two championships in the bag already. In '96, it legitimately felt like it was never going to happen for us