In order to start the transition to basketball season, we’ll be counting down the days until the first game — in classic TheUConnBlog fashion (i.e. inconsistently) – and honoring our forefathers along the way. You can check out all of the entries here.
On this, the final day before Basketballmas in Connecticut, we post you two simple videos - one above, and one at the very end of the post.
These videos are the inspiration for our obsession over opening night, the reason we lose our minds after great victories, why we are inconsolable after crushing defeats.
With one day remaining until UConn kicks off its 2009-10 basketball season, what else could represent it besides One Shining Moment? It seems only fitting that we begin 2009-10 where we ended 2008-09 (or, as the case may be below, 2003-04).
UConn fans have been blessed to have had two such shining moments, and over the past 30 or so days we've celebrated those moments. We've also taken time to tip our caps to those who have made their indelible mark on the UConn program, from the day Connecticut Agricultural College played its first game in 1901, to the night I watched Jeff Adrien, A.J. Price and Hasheem Thabeet - fresh off a Final Four loss - mournfully trudge up the steps at Ford Field, together as a team for the final time.
But we celebrate the past only in the context that the future will reward us in new, joyous ways.
Will this edition of the Huskies prominently feature in the next One Shining Moment? The odds are against them, much as they are against any single team. But at 0-0, we shun oddsmakers and pundits. Destiny remains in our hands - as in 2004 and 1999 - until it is wrested away from us. And come March, our oblique determination to watch our team's heroics be captured in "One Shining Moment" takes precedence over all else.
In the meantime, we have 30+ games, numerous rivals and an intriguing mixture of new and old faces to distract ourselves. Beginning in exactly 24 hours.
Game on, you magnificent men of the blue and white.
Let's go Huskies.