A moment to congratulate my Connecticut Huskies

In 1990 I got the chicken pox in March. It was a GREAT illness, it really was. I didn't feel all that sick, wasn't coughing or sneezing or throwing up, I had my appetttite, and I couldn't go to school. It was like a free vacation for two weeks in exchange for a little iching. Heck, sign me up for that right now.
I stayed with my grandmother while I was sick and she was more than happy to have her only grandson stay with her, even if he was covered with about 3,000 little red pimples at the time. It was great: home-cooked meals, staying up late with no consequences, and on television there was college basketball.
I was 9 at the time and had never really watched college ball before. As a youngster my sport was baseball. The Yankees were the universe in my life, with Don Mattingly serving as the supreme ruler. By that tender age I was already a devoted pinstriper, watching games on a regular basis even though the Bronx wasn't exactly a bastion of good play in those days.
But 1989-90 was a different year in Connecticut. I had heard about this team from the University of Connecticut that had done some really cool things. They were from my home state and they were going to this big tourney, one that everyone seemed to be talking about. So, for two weeks, I sat on the couch in grandmother's den and watched every single college basketball game that was on television. And Uconn started to win.
In case you don't remember, Uconn that year played one of the most memorable tournament games ever against Clemson in the Sweet 16. In a game Uconn had led almost all the way, Clemson, taking advantage of some Husky miscues and bad shots, had battled all the way back to take the lead. With one second left Scott Burrell stood at the other end of the court with the ball in his hand, ran the sidelines to avoid the defender, and flicked a long, touchdown pass down the court to Uconn point guard Tate George.
George caught the ball in the corner, pivoted quickly and put up a 16-footer that touched nothing but net. The buzzer sounded. The game was over and Uconn celebrated their improbable victory.
From that point forward I was hooked. The madness of the tourney, and excitement of the moment, and the understanding that this was a team representing more than just a college but an entire state sucked me in. From that point forward, I was a Uconn fan the same way I was a Yankee fan.
I ended up attending the school when I got out of high school and was there in 1999 when the men's program won their first championship. Being on that campus when Uconn beat Duke in yet another memorable game was the best experience of my life. It was an explosion of pure joy; a whole student body taking part in a celebration joined by an entire state longing for something their own.
Last night, at around 6:30 p.m., Uconn beat the Missouri Tigers to punch their ticket to their third Final Four. I watched with a group of my friends who I have known since college. We reacted to every play, yelled at the refs, and probably made fools of ourselves in public, but that's what sports are all about; passion. In the end, Uconn was victorious, and for a brief moment, despite having graduated nearly 10 years ago, we all had the chance to feel like we were back in college.
Sometimes it is easy to forget that these are simply kids playing a mans game. At 18-years old they are thrust into the spotlight, saddled with the weight of an entire student body's hopes - and many times the hope of thousands of alumni and millions in a state - strapped to their back and they are asked to come through in clutch moments as if they had been there before. Go to any college game and you'll hear the same kind of crticism directed at these young men as you would at any NBA player, and sometimes the slanders are even more outrageous.
That is what is so satisfying about this current victory for this Uconn team. Since the mid-1990s the Huskies have been one of the best programs in the country, bar none. They have won Big East Tournament titles and two NCAA championships. They have played in some of the best games of the last 15 years and the fans, such as myself, have gotten a bit spoiled.
In 2006, only two years after Ben Gordon and Emeka Okafor led the Huskies to championship #2, the Huskies seemed poised to bring home another title. They had the best team in the country, led by the sturdy point guard Marcus Williams and the ultra-talented sophomore Rudy Gay. But that team, filled with future NBA players, seemed more concerned with their future careers than winning a team trophy. When the ultimate cinderella team in George Mason wandered in to play the number one team in the Elite Eight that year, it seemed only fitting that they dethrone the preoccupied group.
Welcome in the current batch of Huskies. Jeff Adrien and Craig Austrie were freshmen on that disappointing 06 squad, and AJ Price, the most ballyhooed member of the recruting class, was forced from the team after suffering an anyuerism that nearly cost him his life. The next year, talented guard/wing players Jerome Dyson and Stanley Robinson joined the squad, along with a 7'3" center from Tanzina, Hasheem Thabeet.
It was, it's safe to say, a very a-typical Uconn year.
Instead of waiting to see what bracket would be their domain in the tournament, the Huskies that year waited to see if the NIT would be asking them to attend. They didn't. For the first time under Jim Calhoun the Huskies weren't going to post-season play.
The next year yielded better results with a share of the Big East regular season, but a crushing defeat at the hands of West Virginia in the Big East Tournament and the team's first opening-round lose to San Diego, after Price went down with a torn ACL, and the questions about this team's mental toughness and overall ability began to be raised.
Was this the worst recruiting class in the history of Uconn under Jim Calhoun? What had the legendary coach seen in some of these players? Was Calhoun and his coaching staff slipping?
At the end of last season it appeared that the problems for this recruiting class were too numerous to fix. Players like Robinson and Dyson seemed incapable to tapping into their natural abilities, not showing the type of progress other Husky stars had made in the past, and Thabeet seemed poised to simply be a big man in the middle with little basketball skill other than to present an imposing body and some shot blocking ability.
This recruiting class had never won a post-season game. It had gone up against the better teams in the Big East conference and always fallen short. It appeared to be a team that relied on simple athletic ability and no basketball IQ. They had defensive lapses, turned the ball over with far too much regularity, and couldn't hit a jump shot if they were left open 10 feet in front of the basket.
For the first time, people began to question whether Uconn had peaked as a program and were on a downward slide, potentially slinking back into the pack, no longer able to hang with the top programs in the country.
That's why going to the Final Four this year is so special.
This group has been through a lot, from scandals to injuries to having to deal with the extreme pressures that come from playing at Uconn. Through it all, Jim Calhoun stated that he "believed" in this group of players and, for much of the last four years it would be safe to say that he was really the only one.
But now, this group of what looked to be underachievers have cemented themselves as one of the great Uconn classes of all time. AJ Price has gone from an injury prone, scandal-tainted marginal player to one of the top performers in the country and a sure-fire bet to be one of the top point guards chosen in the NBA draft. Hasheem Thabeet is perhaps the most menacing force in college basketball today, and his athleticism and footwork, all of which has come in the last year, has made him a Naismith Player of the Year candidate. And Stanley Robinson, whose ability and focus was questioned as recently as late February, has become as consistent and special a player as the Huskies have, all but replacing Dyson and giving the team a spark they were needing.
Maturity comes in time for everyone. Some of us achieve a level of maturity early on while others struggle through their 20s and 30s. But there is no formula and no guarantee that someone will struggle through and achieve despite all negativity. This group could have easily continued to be a disappointment, falling to a less talented team once things got dicey. Instead, they stepped up, wiped away all of the criticisms and slanders thrown at them, to put themselves in a position to win their sport's ultimate prize. When no one believed in them, including the school and fanbase they represent, they believed in each other, and that belief, that faith has finally paid off.
We could talk about the controversy surrounding the program, but that would simply take away from this accomplishment acheived by students. They are simple young men, none of whom are guaranteed anything in basketball other than another weekend of games to play, who performed under pressure the way all of us, no matter our age, would hope to as well.
Congrats to the Uconn Huskies, the team I have loved and followed for years. You earned every accolade and every victory. And you proved once again that faith is almost always rewarded, especially when it appears there is no reason for such faith.
Good luck in Detroit and know that this fan will be watching and believeing. It would be a sin at this point not to.