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Message: [QUOTE="Scrutineer, post: 2936676, member: 8240"] I don't know about the others, but this warrior drove from way out of state when the team was awful, so let me give some perspective. And I'm not looking for a medal or a chest to pin it on. We had seen a glimpse of what could be when Shabel was coach and naively use to think "why can't we win like the national powers?" I remember some of us thinking we had a chance at Lew Alcindor when he was coming out of high school (I'll leave time here for those who'll have to look up who he was/is). Once we again lived a relatively short distance away (Binghamton, Lewiston and Albany), we started buying season tickets and may have bailed on one bad weather night in 35 years (last 20 in Western Mass were a breeze). Gave weekday tickets to my parents in Cromwell when we lived 5 hours away, but made all the others, including the infamous Wednesday night games at the Big East. Always a loss it seemed, even when we won it once or twice, but we'd stay for the whole weekend and try to imagine what it would feel like to be Georgetown, Syracuse and St. John's fans (even Villanova now and then because we lost something like 20 in a row to them). Things were so bad that there was a UConn reception hosted by Dee Rowe the morning after the Wednesday Big East game sometime about 1985 that was attended by 7 people, and my wife and I were two of them. So many depressing losses, but one turned into a healthy one. We had a one point lead on Villanova in Hartford and were about to break the 15 or 20 game losing streak and lost on a last second full court drive for a layup. Had a beer or two at Gaetano's and smoked about a half pack of cigarettes there and on the two hour drive home and felt so bad the next morning I told friends I was quitting till UConn won the NC. Their response was, "so you're quitting for life?" I did quit, but did have one in 1999...and only one. And then the good times started with the NIT in 1988. All those in the season tickets around us felt what we did. "Somethin' happenin' here": [MEDIA=youtube]bjSpO2B6G4s[/MEDIA] So, maybe the answer is we "keyboard warriors" have some perspective because we believed someday things would be better and attended all those games when we had no chance, just hope, like football today. We knew winning wasn't automatic and weren't spoiled from day one as many on this site probably were if they came on the scene from the early 90's till today. You had to be at the NIT in 1988 to feel how much excitement there was and see the joy in the players' big smiles when we finally won a championship. Moved a 1,000 miles away in 2011 but still go to games at ECU, USF and UCF and made it to the first two men's games and the women's opener this year too because games in person are a lot better and much less aggravating when things aren't going well. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach