OT: - My Uconn wall of 1999. | The Boneyard

OT: My Uconn wall of 1999.

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Hi everyone, this is a real long story but I hope people will enjoy it since it is about Uconn! Please give me any (constructive) feedback you have.

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Part 1

The movie Blue Chips allowed me to seriously consider the game of basketball as a legitimate way to spend my free time. I was only 9 so the overall message of the movie was lost on me but the aesthetics of the game as shown in the movie, the rim shattering dunks and the powerful athletes appealed to me a great deal. Shortly after the movie I learned as much as I could about Shaq and Michael Jordan and instantly became a Bulls fan (sorry Orlando). As for Uconn, it all started about six weeks later on a cool, sunny March afternoon. I was a 4th grader and had just won three games of "Horse" in a row against a half dozen classmates and was eager to start a 4th game. Just as the next game started the bell rung signaling the end of playtime and an interruption to my winning streak, at least momentarily as there was always Friday. I reluctantly shuffled back into class after recess to deal with another day of teaching from an ogre I was afraid of. He had once taken a pencil out of my hand, with force, and threw it out the window after I committed the serious crime of expressing interest in a writing assignment and started it before he had finished his instructions. But this day would be far different than I could ever fathom.

Now I don't remember exactly how things transpired but I will pretend it happened something like this: "Alright class, I have decided to be less of an ogre today and will let you watch some TV!"

At first I groaned as I realized it would not be anything I liked. "Yawn," just some boring old guys talking about something I don't know or care about, just like Mr. Ogre." My attitude soon changed as things on the TV segued from the old guys blabbing about god only knows to much younger guys shooting hoops. Granted these weren't the Bulls that I was so enamored with but my interest soon piqued and I was tuned in! Suddenly what I was seeing on the TV brought back memories of me beating my older brother, my uncle and his friend in horse. "I bet I could take these guys in horse too" I thought to myself! The ignorance of a 4th grader for these were the mighty Huskies! They could beat me ten times blindfolded before I drained a single free throw. It was love at first sight! They were so graceful, so powerful, they looked like future Bulls in training! We enjoyed the game for nearly an hour and for the first time that year I was sad to hear the bell at the end of the day as the game was not close to finishing. I dashed to the bus, yelled to the bus driver to hurry despite being the first one on the bus and must have jumped off the bus before it was fully stopped when it arrived to my street. I figured the momentum would carry me home fast enough to see as much as the game as possible. 4th grade logic. Also, adult logic tells me the bus was, in all actuality, fully stopped. The game was enjoyable and I watched my new favorite team dispatch of a bunch of nameless guys I didn't care about (Rider). However the game that would occur 8 days later was not nearly as nice against another, more prominent group of nameless faces. Despite being a new Uconn fan it did not stop the loss from being devastating and I went to bed, for the first (but not the last) time in my young life dropping F bombs.

The intensity of my fandom would only grow as the years passed. If you remember Boy Meets world, there was an episode in season 1 where Corey was "sick" and had to stay home from school. That did not stop him from playing laundry basketball in his living room later that day. That is until his childhood friend Topanga stopped by to bring him some soup in the middle of one of his shots. In one of the sweetest moments of the season, the episode ended with Corey teaching her how to play laundry basketball. Similar to that episode, I would go down to the basement, kerosene heater turned on full blast and toss a small ball into a distant laundry basket pretending I was a Husky leading the team to victory as a Uconn game played on the TV in the background. Somehow I enjoyed these times alone with "my Huskies". I loved the Bulls too but felt more of an attachment with the Huskies. During the day I would take my "game" outside to the basketball court across the street from where I lived. On March 22nd of 1995 I "was Ray Allen", slashing to the hoop (or jumping through the snow) to score a basket to lead the Huskies to a sweet 16 victory and I went to bed that night believing that was reality. This imagination did not prepare me for the loss that would come the very next day.

In fact my mother knew that the way to punish me was not to take away my SNES but, as an example on March 25 of 1996, to send me on a family outing. This was the last thing I wanted to do since a. I was a pre teen and b. I would miss Uconn's soon to be triumph over UCLA. My mom knew this and used it as my kryptonite. I probably should not have called my sister the name that I did but that was a brutal punishment handed down from my mom! "Can't you just make me stand in a corner" I helplessly tried to negotiate with my mom to no avail. Regardless, on the drive home all I could think about was ESPN playing the highlights of the Uconn win. However upon getting home, it was not to be and I looked at the highlights in horror as UCLA won in a shoot out.

During those years in the mid 90s I would move back and forth, like a yo yo, between a bedroom on the first floor and a room in the basement of the house. As a soon to be teen I loved the room in the basement as it provided an escape from the rest of my "annoying" family and a quiet escape to watch Uconn and Chicago basketball. The winters would usually drive me back up to the first floor in all of its central heating glory. But regardless of where I was, the basement was the place to watch Uconn games, kerosene heater on full blast, much to the alarm of my mother, as well as the electricity bill. To this day I will never forget the unique smell emitted from that particular heater and similar smells send my mind into a nostalgic trance as I recall this very pleasurable distant past which obviously appears even better in hindsight. I used to lean my back against the heater until I felt a slight sensation running up and down my back which signaled that I was warm enough and I would rinse and repeat as many times as needed during the game.

Part 2

On Sunday March 22, 1998 I was back in the basement and unable to get out of bed. My mother figured it was because I did not want to go to church. My older sister thought she knew better and assumed it was over a girl! My younger sister, snarky as ever thought she would be clever and tell my mom it was a fight with my "boyfriend" or, in other words, my best friend. Finally my older brother thought he would be able to make the correct call by claiming I was sick from last nights pizza and that I should never be given pizza again, ever, in my life. No, all "great" guesses but it was something totally different. This time I was sure Uconn would advance to their first final four ever, I was so certain they would finally overcome that seemingly impassable barrier! UNC was supposed to go down just like whatever opponent was placed in front of the Bulls. At least in my mind UNC stood no chance. Then, the game happened and Uconn could never quite string enough points together to move in front and take the lead. Florida, Ole Miss, UCLA and now UNC, especially when in contrast to the Bulls amazing run in the 90s was too much for me to handle as a young fan and I went into a hibernation period of NO UCONN! I also moved back up to the first floor room of the house in April.

Part 3 - 7 months later
On November 6th my mother surprised me with a cool birthday present. I had expressed interest in moving back to the basement in the previous weeks and upon coming home from that school that Friday the downstairs room was decked out in all of the things I currently loved. But NO Uconn. There were two huge shelves next to my bed to hold all of my collectibles. If anyone remembers Carvel icecream, they had a promotion in the mid 90s where you could get their ice cream in small plastic baseball helmets. It took literally forever to get all the hats but I had gotten them all by the summer of 1998. The shelves were large enough to allow me to place the hats in two rows of 15 with plenty of space behind the two rows to house my huge POG collection. That was just the first shelf! My other shelf on the bottom had my stereo and burgeoning cd collection including the most recent De La Soul release. Under the shelf there was a large space for my shoes. I also had three smaller shelves above my desk on the other side of the room where my Chicago Bulls memorabilia and baseball cards were located as well as a small archiac TV and snes with tons of snes videogames. The huge wall was the only blank space and I had no idea what to do with it, at least at first.

Sadly the 1998-1999 Uconn season started with a whimper, at least for me. On Wednesday, December 2nd the kitchen phone rang at the bright and early time of 6:45am. My mom was perplexed, "who calls at this hour" she muttered to herself. It was my best friend was on the other end.

I could barely utter more than the following sentence: "Dude, what are you doing up so early, school doesn't start for an hour!"

He ignored my annoyance and continued. "Did you see the game last night?"

I had not seen the game the previous night. I soon learned that Uconn had kicked 14th ranked Washington's butt 69-48. "My goodness I've been a horrible fan I yelled, suddenly awake, as I ran to the living room to pick up a newspaper and confirm what my friend had just stated on the phone. Indeed, Uconn had won in convincing fashion as the box score would show together with a beautiful up close and personal picture of Uconn in the process of the Washington whumpin'. I took the newspaper to my room in the basement, placed it on the bed, exited my room and ran upstairs and past the kitchen to the door leading outside which led to a short path leading to the garage.

I turned around, a brilliant idea suddenly entered my mind. "Mom, do we have previous newspapers from the past month?"

"Yes, we give them to the recycling people later today!"

"Oh no you don't!" I was going to make it up to my dear Huskies. I had been a poor fan and I was going to collect newspapers, as many as possible from the past month so I could read about their first 4 victories. I was able to find news stories for the Richmond, Hartford and Wagner games. I could never find any paper from the November 16th game vs Quinnipiac. For some reason my mother tended to not get newspapers on Monday. Any way I ran back inside, pile of newspapers in hand and instructed my mom not to get within 10 feet of my dear newspapers! "I will leave these on my bed, leave them in the exact spot mother!" I knew she was a neat freak and even with my instructions I was not sure they would survive the day. Lucky for me, my mom became tied up with a business prospect that day and upon arriving home the papers were still in their original spot next to my pillow. I got to work cutting everything Husky related out. I had also taken a school paper home that spoke about the Washington win, an article from the Day. I started to paste everything on the wall with scotch tape, masking tape, sticky tack, whatever I could find to paste everything related to Uconn was fiar game! I dug out my Husky banner that I had hid behind a shelf in the laundry room after the UNC loss and put that on the wall, front and center.

Four days later Uconn beat Michigan State without too much issue and the next day I ran outside to wait in my bare feet, eagerly counting down the seconds until the mail man arrived to deliver the newspaper of Uconn's victory. "No one is getting near this paper until I have everything Uconn on my wall" I thought to myself! Again, I was able to locate another newspaper article about the victory when I went to school.

Umass, Pitt, Nova, Gtown, BC, the wins kept rolling in and my wall quickly filled up with newspaper clippings of each boxscore, each picture was carefully snipped out of the newspaper. I even dug out an old jersey with Travis Knight's signature and placed it below the Uconn banner. Being the great Uconn fan that I was, I had used his signed jersey for spitball practice the summer after the UNC loss, certain I would be free of Uconn forever. But I was a teen and things change rapidly and now I was tuned in more than ever before. I was becoming an avid Uconn fan to the extent that some of that Bull's gear would have to take a backseat in my room, a room that was quickly becoming Uconn territory!

Uconn won with ease in the next three games but my relentless pursuit of everything Uconn did not waver despite the ease of victory. I did not get comfortable and figured every game was a battle. This would prove to be true vs Miami but in the end Uconn eked out a 2 point win. Later that day I went to my friends house to shoot some hoops. It was at this time that he informed me that his dad had been given Final Four tickets, a wonderful gift from the company he was working for. I was so jealous but also happy for his dad.

Uconn climbed to 19-0 before an injury would sideline two starters versus Syracuse. I was still fairly young by Uconn fan standards but I already disliked Syracuse a great deal so the loss that followed was a huge deal for me. I did not hear the end of it back at school that Tuesday. There was one 'Cuse fan at school and he was sure to let me know that Cuse had something the Huskies would never have, two final four births including 1996, the same year Uconn took their shattering, traumatic loss in the sweet 16 to Ole Miss.

"Ya, well, what is a 'Cuse fan doing in CT any way?" I muttered to myself. I had nothing else to say.

Uconn came back strong 5 days later and beat Stanford on the road in, to this day, one of the most impressive road victories I have seen from Uconn. I was back to cutting out every story I could find on the game and pasting them on my wall. A few more wins followed before a heartbreaking loss to Miami. Still, I wanted to document what was feeling more and more like an incredible season so I posted a small tidbit about that game and, finally, even included a smaller tid bit about the Cuse game. They had to be small bits and I was starting to run out of room on my wall. I moved some more of my Chicago gear off the nearby shelf and moved the Travis Knight Jersey and banner onto to the shelf instead. The fact that Chicago stunk it up in 1998/99 during a strike shortened season made this choice very easy for me. The Uconn rise coincided with the sharp decline in Bulls basketball, both in the standings and in my room.

Uconn ended the season with sweet revenge against Syracuse and I had my fun the next day in school. I also made sure to make the win a prominent showcase on my wall as it was a fantastic way to end the regular season, especially after the 17 point loss earlier that year.

When I got to school I was able to find the Cuse fan rather easily. Still, his reply showed little respect towards Uconn: "Ya, we might be tied 1-1 for the season but Syracuse still has two final fours and Uconn has how many again?"

A few days later the big east tourney started and I had to go to an after school center the day Uconn played Seton Hall in the first round but the game was on TV. While everyone else was too busy shooting hoops on the basketball court, playing board games or on their tamagotchi I ignored the noise and was focused on the TV and the close game unfolding before my eyes. It was too close for comfort and I could not stand it! This was supposed to be an easy win in my young mind and I did not understand what was going on! The next day was much easier on my nerves as Uconn easily dispatched of the Cuse to take the season series 2-1 and a place in the Big east finals. Uconn also took the championship game in an anti climatic, but very joyful victory over St. Johns. I moved a few things around on my wall and up went the newspaper clippings of the Seton Hall, Cuse and S, Johns wins!

I would soon learn that Uconn was given a 1 seed after a hard fought season. I found some small pieces of info in the local newspapers, ESPN magazine and Sports Illustrated magazine in the following week including a two page bracket that I cut out and placed towards the end of my wall back home in my room.

Uconn played a late Thursday game vs UTSA but I was able to be discreet and keep the TV volume, as well as my cheering at very low levels as I watched Uconn quickly run by the roadrunners. Two days later Uconn continued that momentum and beat New Mexico with ease. It was back to the sweet 16 but I knew that the elite 8 and Sweet 16 tended to be Uconns road blocks no matter how successful the season had been so I reserved my excitement and could not escape from the nervous feeling invading my every being.

I remember being at a Chuck-e-cheese on March 13 for a birthday party, my eyes glued to the TVs displaying every tourney game rather than celebrate my nieces birthday. I was especially focused on the Arkansas/Iowa game as Uconn would be playing one of these two teams. To this day I do not know why, but I wanted Arkansas and was a little scared when I saw Iowa pulling away in the closing minutes. I went back home feeling nervous about the results and went to work updating my wall to include the New Mexico win.

As far as memory serves the Uconn/Iowa game was a late night game but I had worked out a deal with my mom to stay up late that Thursday. I even went upstairs to watch this game, my mom quietly knitting in the background as my nerves continued to eat away at me. My mom had no clue! Maybe it was just me but I despised the attention the commentators were giving to the soon to retire Tom Davis in the pre-game lead up. It was almost as if they were trying to generate sympathy for the old guy! No! Iowa absolutely IS NOT GOING all the way this year and no one, Uconn fan or not should care how far he can take Iowa in his final year as this is Uconns year for the Final four, go away! Iowa proved to be quite thorn in Uconn's side for much of the game but the Huskies pulled away and along with it, my hopes increased. I was sure to grab the newspaper the next day and add the victory to the bracket on my wall, filling it out as the tourney went. I was ecstatic to see Gonzaga take out Florida later that day! This was suddenly turning into a cake walk I thought to myself! How foolish I was!

The excitement of "only" having a 10 seed standing between Uconn and the final four soon gave way to utter panic as Gonzaga matched Uconn point for point and entered the half up one point. Please tell me this is not Florida/UCLA/Ole Miss/UNC all over again. Surely this is Uconn's time to shine! In this moment I realized this feeling in my heart is what most older people must feel. At least 14 year old logic allowed me to assume that I was about to have a heart attack. My palms were sweating each time the Zags matched Uconn shot for shot. I felt a certain numbness when I saw Hall drain a 3 with complete confidence late in the second half to bring Gonzaga to within a point. Surely the basketball gods are going to see Uconn through this too close for comfort game, surely! I closed my eyes and put my hands over my eyes before opening them to see Uconn draining a few free throws to increase their lead to 67-62. I watched as each painstaking second ticked off the clock and the butterflies dissipated turning into a moment of pure joy as Uconn was going to the final four for the first time ever! My mom was thrilled for me but soon became annoyed, demanding that I take my one man celebration outside. Shoes be damned I thought to myself as I ran outside with just Husky shorts and t-shirt to shield me from the bitter March cold. My shauser followed close behind, not quite sure what was energizing me but happy to run around for a bit just the same.

I was less nervous about the Ohio State game. I went to a friends house to ride bikes around the neighborhood as it was a very sunny day. We shot hoops and and I beat my friend at Horse. We were both eager to see Uconn and were keen to fill up the day with as many things as possible to pass the time. Still we had a few hours until tip time so we went inside to continue our pursuit towards finding every star in the game in Mario 64. We stopped midway through one of the more difficult levels to watch the tip between the Huskies and Buckeyes. I figured Uconn was in unexplored territory and anything they could do after Gonzaga was just gravy. However as the game wore on I deviated more and more from that belief and and by half time I had completely abandoned that insane thought process and was such a wreck that I needed a diversion by half time. My friend and I tried a few levels in Mario 64 but the energy flowing through our veins made it hard to focus. Plus we were driving his mom nuts. So we went outside to play a few games of horse and made it back just in time for the 2nd half. Uconn won in a close one and later that day we would find out that Uconn was about to face the toughest challenge of the year for the championship, the dreaded Duke. I wanted Michigan State but knew that a victory over Duke would make the championship all the sweeter, beat the best to be the best. Yes, even at 14 I was like that.

My entire family stopped everything to watch Uconn/Duke. It was like the entire state took notice. At least that is what I want to think to this day. No one around me considered that Uconn was actually the underdog. We knew Uconn had a chance, if they played a near perfect game that is. The Huskies looked shell shocked at first as Duke jumped out to a quick 9-2 lead but Uconn quickly gained composure and settled in for what would be a very stressful, very exciting first half. The whole feel of the telecast was just so different from a regular season game between Miami or BC, or even of a few weeks ago vs Cuse and St. Johns in the Big east tourney or even the first two rounds earlier that month.

I won't bore you with the details as it is well known what happened. The world was shocked that night and more importantly my wall would soon have the Huskies crowning achievement, their first ever national championship! The next day and for the next few weeks I dug through every single magazine, newspaper and publication for content to post on my wall. I got two special addition sports Illustrated magazines celebrating the Huskies. I think the headline was "Top dogs" and I kept one while the other was gutted and almost literally cut up to shreds for the sake of being posted on my wall as the center piece to the amazing season. The following weekend I met with my friend to shoot hoops at his house and we talked at length about his fathers amazing trip to the final four, made more incredible by the fact that the Huskies were there too. It was a beautiful weekend and when his dad came home we eagerly listened for a few more hours even if it meant losing time in the sun to go inside and listen.

Part 4
It was the middle of June, 2000, the last day of school. Upon coming home my mom dropped a bombshell that turned my excitement to dismay. We would be moving. Granted it was just across town but all I ever knew was in about a 1 mile radius, the local lake, the basketball court across the street, my friends house, the family owned convenience store and the library were all within a short bike ride and I would be moving to a part of town I had never been to, far from all of that. My small world was being turned upside down. The next day I took off for a week to spend time with my friend and his father on a camping trip but also because I was upset about the move. My mom confirmed that as soon as I returned packing would commence and we would be leaving for the new house that night. The camping trip came and went and I arrived home to quite the shock. Everything in my room was packed and put away in boxes, the only thing that remained was my wall of Uconn. My sister sat in my bed ready to taunt me. "Either you tear it down or I will tear down this mess!"

"It is not a mess" I yelled defiantly. I demanded that she leave and after a minor struggle she finally went upstairs and I was left alone, one last time, with the wall. I tried, in vain, to carefully take everything down but the newspaper ripped so easily every time I tried to remove a box score or picture. The sticky tack I had used, as well as the clear masking tape in other areas was not planned for a move, I had planned on having that room forever! I ran upstairs to plead with my mom one last time not to move. Again in vain. All I heard in response was my sister being annoying. I sulked back to my room. It was a sad looking room, everything else in the room was bare and empty aside from the boxes in the corner of the room and my wall of Uconn, still hanging proudly but ill planned just the same. Finally realizing there was no way I could save the wall I knew what I had to do, I had to suck it up and just take it off quickly like a band aid.

You know those butterfly feelings you get when you want to ask that cute girl or boy out? The feeling of anticipation? I get those when I feel sad too and it is a sinking feeling rather than the elevation you get from typical butterflies. Taking everything off the wall was more difficult than I could have imagined just a few short months ago when I had started putting it together. I wasn't just taking down newspaper clippings or pictures of champion athletes, I was taking down memories, saying goodbye to a very joyous part of my life. I had yet to experience a heartbreak or a major fight with my friend or any severe punishment from my mom (that would come soon, however, like the first time I got drunk). I did not cry but I had an odd feeling in the pit of my stomach. Later that night I sat in my new room on the second floor of my new house. It was pouring outside and I could not figure out what I wanted to do with my time. All I could do was look to the left, then to the right, the walls were bare.

Part 5

It is 2018 and the ease and speed in which people are able to take photos still amazes me. We have tablets, phones, digital cameras, etc. that capture any moment in an instant and storage space is so massive that people are now capable of taking 1000s of photos of their vacation or 100s of different pictures of one thing from several vantage points and all we need to do is transfer those photos via usb to free up that space again and again. Photo taking is almost literally limitless only confined by our imagination. I got my first digital camera in the summer of 2006 as a gift from my mom before my first ever trip across the pond to Iceland, France and England to visit a girlfriend at the time. I was just starting to realize the endless potential of the digital camera in 2006. Since that time I have used various digital cameras, tablets and phones to document nearly every aspect of my life from vacations to special events to even mundane things like a meal out or a funny looking squirrel. Before that summer in 2006 the ease in which I could take photos was not nearly as high and I was limited to the occasional cheap kodak camera. My mother did a decent job documenting the most important aspects of life pre-2006 or before I got my first camera but there will always be one thing I wish I had documented with just one photo. It was that day back in the summer of 2000. Perhaps my biggest regret as far as not having a single photo will always be my Uconn wall of 1999.
 
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gtcam

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I'll print it out and read it during my potty breaks along with the Courant but I'll bet anything that there is more interesting and factual news in your tale than there has been in the Courant in 10 years. I promise not to do to your story as I do with the Courant
 
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Good story. It brought back memories. I was doing some particularly stuff with a girl from Simsbury during a few of the 98’ tourney games. My memories would make for a more exciting story but would never clear the filter or the mods.
 

August_West

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Sorry, I guess?


Now you can have a new UConn wall.

Just Print out out that opening post and you can wallpaper a 1500 square foot house with it.

:)


it was a cool story. Thanks.
 
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Good story. It brought back memories. I was doing some particularly stuff with a girl from Simsbury during a few of the 98’ tourney games. My memories would make for a more exciting story but would never clear the filter or the mods.
haha but remember, I was between 9 and 14 in that story so no stuff. Now the second championship n 2004 when I was at college...more exciting but I will always feel that first one and the years that came before was more interesting even if it was not as exciting.

tl/dr
?

Can you provide the Sparks Notes version?
Young kid learns about basketball team from mean teacher and years of disappointment follows. Young kid turns into a teen who nearly gives up on the team after an especially difficult loss only to come back to the team as an even bigger fan just before its most amazing triumph and documents the rise to the top as it happens. Teen does not plan ahead and said "documentation" (the wall of Uconn) is lost in a sudden move. That same teen grows up and reflects on that experience as an adult.

DogMania, is that you?
Who is that?

One thing I learned from that: there is no character limit per post.
Ok?

??
 
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