Walkon Garry back for another season

STORRS — The UConn men’s basketball team’s jerseys were stacked in a pile inside the visitors’ locker room at Moody Coliseum in Dallas back on Feb. 21. When Matt Garry went to pick his out, his Husky teammates surrounded him and started cheering.

A few years earlier, Garry had nearly quit playing high school basketball and instead considered playing in a recreational league in his hometown of Southington. Now, he was officially on the UConn roster, making his first road trip, and he had Jalen Adams, Christian Vital, Josh Carlton and his other new teammates whooping it up for him as he picked up his uniform.

“Just to know that everyone else was excited for me was a great feeling,” Garry recalled. “It was really fun.”

Garry, a 6foot5 lefty guard, will be a walkon again this season for UConn, which will hold its first official practice on Saturday. He won’t have a huge impact on the floor as the Huskies try to reach the NCAA tournament for the first time in four years. But he’ll help UConn players get better as a hardworking competitor in practice, will likely dress and travel to every game and, hopefully, get on the floor a few times in the waning minutes of a blowout — and perhaps even get his name in the box score.

“I love it,” Garry said.

“Coach (Dan Hurley) is great, he believes in us. We believe in him because he knows what he’s doing. He’s very intense, he knows how to get the job done.”

Although Garry didn’t become a walkon until the final few weeks of last season and wasn’t able to get into a game, his experience couldn’t have been better.

“Best time of my life,” he said. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

Garry had earned a spot on the roster as a walkon last September, but his course schedule conflicted with the Huskies’ practice schedule, so he couldn’t commit. He stayed with the team as a manager, however, then switched his schedule

around for the second semester and became a practice player in January.

On the day of UConn’s Feb. 21 trip to SMU, director of basketball operations Eric Youncofski approached Garry in the warmup lines at the Werth Family Champions Center.

“Hey, you’re getting a jersey for this trip,” Youncofski informed him. “You’ve been working real hard.”

Recalled Garry: “That was kind of the plan from the beginning, and they actually went through with it.”

Garry dressed and traveled with the team over its final eight games. He even earned the nickname “Hoosiers” from Hurley, who appreciated his hard work and dedication.

Not bad for a kid who

didn’t even make alldivision while at St. Paul in Bristol.

Garry, whose father, Michael, is a middle school teacher in Southington and uncle, Robert, is an elementary school principal, spent his first two years at Southington High. But things didn’t work out well on the basketball side, and he decided to leave the school after his sophomore year.

“A lot of personal reasons,” Garry said. “I didn’t have a good relationship with people there.”

He transferred to St. Paul but was still considering giving up on high school ball and playing in a Southington rec league, until longtime St. Paul coach Steve Phelps encouraged him to try out for the team. Garry wound up playing his final two seasons for the

Falcons, notching 12 doubledoubles as a senior.

He was recruited by several Division 3 schools, including the University of Saint Joseph, coached by a certain Hall of Famer named Jim Calhoun, but decided to go to UConn due to its academic programs.

Now, against the odds, he’s a part of the UConn athletics program, as well.

“We have big goals,” Garry said of this year’s Husky team. “We have a picture of the conference trophy over there (on the wall of the Werth Center). It travels with us everywhere we go — the gym, the cafeteria, the weight room. We have goals, and we know what we’re trying to achieve.”