Huskies take step in right direction

STORRS — Grown men, 30 years older than them, sat a couple of rows behind their bench on this rewarding Sunday afternoon. Some pushing 50, some already 50, yeah, they’d once run in the young guys’ sneakers.

They had been here that Saturday night the place opened, had played at Gampel Pavilion on Jan. 27, 1990 when UConn upset No. 15 St. John’s and Malik Sealy, 77-58. The place was new. There was a new feeling, too, a growing feeling that Jim Calhoun was building something special and one day, someday, anything would be possible.

“I live in Atlanta, I’m always wearing UConn stuff, and I still hear all the time, ‘I was on the edge of my seat against Clemson and then Duke,’” Rod Sellers said. “I’m hearing that in Georgia and that’s 30 years ago.”

Scott Burrell, the multisport marvel out of Hamden who coaches Southern Connecticut now, was here. Chris Smith, still UConn’s all-time leading scorer out of Bridgeport, was here. So were John Gwynn, Sellers, Lyman DePriest, Murray Williams and Dan Cyrulik. Marc Suhr brought soccer jersey overs from Germany for his former teammates.

This was the “Dream Season” team. Tate George’s shot, late, great, made it a dream in the Sweet Sixteen. Only Christian Laettner’s buzzer beater kept UConn from the Final Four.

“Thirty years ago, these are the guys who got the whole thing started,” Calhoun told the crowd of 9,409 at halftime. “Big East championships, national championships, All-Americans, all the great things, they started it all, because they believed in each other, believed in the coaching staff, but they really believed in UConn.

“It was an honor and pleasure and privilege to yell at each one of them — and I took that liberty to the extreme because I knew that something very special was happening.”

And with that, Calhoun said, “Keep the faith, we’ll be back again” and left without further comment to the media. Hey, the man has a game at Regis on Wednesday night to worry about and his St. Joe’s Blue Jays are riding an 18-game winning streak.

Faith was rewarded Sunday in UConn’s riveting 72-71 overtime victory over Cincinnati.

Is UConn back again? When a program has won four national titles since 1999 yet has endured three consecutive losing seasons, the road back to glory is a long one. Sweeping pronouncements can turn into foolish ones. Obviously, a rebuild isn’t navigated in one win at first-place Tulsa and another against Cincinnati. There is so, so much to prove.

Still, with three freshmen starting and a 13-10 team showing all sorts of grit against the tough, talented Bearcats that had blown them out 40 nights earlier, it’s a hard step in the right

direction. Cincinnati had treated his team like “little boys” in that 67-51 loss on Jan. 1, coach Dan Hurley said. So, yes, this was a hard step. A validation for a team in front of some of the program’s greats that there is something worthwhile ahead.

“They’re the ones who started it here,” Christian Vital said. “I wouldn’t say it was pressure. We deal with pressure every day. I think it was nice to get a win in front of them for us to pay respect to them for what they started. We wouldn’t be in this position without them.

“This was a good day for the program.”

It was. In celebrating the “Dream Season” and the opening of Gampel Pavilion, perhaps the vault on the nightmare seasons has been shut. James Bouknight, who scored 17 of his 23 points after halftime, continued to show he is a star in the making.

“My boy,” Vital said. “He’s different.”

Vital, whose hustle and guard muscle exceeded his shooting, still managed to score 19 points while helping to suffocate Jarron Cumberland to 1-for-11 shooting. Four clutch threes led Brendan Adams, who also guarded Cumberland 20 percent of time, to 16 points. It was a game when both Jalen Gaffney and Alterique Gilbert found themselves on the bench during the important minutes of the game.

Really, it was UConn’s defense, down to Vital harrying Cumberland into a shot that he released after the final buzzer sounded, that ultimately gave the Huskies their first victory in four overtime games.

The Huskies got stops. Did Vital get a little body on Cumberland before the shot? Yeah, he did. In my view, Vital definitely fouled him after the clock hit 0:00, but that part doesn’t matter. The game was over.

“I just knew with this crowd, we’d really have to foul to call a foul,” Hurley said. “With a crew like that they weren’t going to bail them out on that shot-fake, jump into the guy, flop, fall down at the end. There was no way they were making that call at that point.”

Hurley was proven correct. He also was correct when he said, “This was a great UConn basketball day.”

The former Huskies gathered in the Werth Champions Center an hour before the game, recounting that first night at Gampel.

“I remember the crowd, the excitement, the guys were tired of playing, practicing in the Field House, going to Hartford,” Smith said. “Being on campus and allowing the kids on campus to come to the games and make it crazy was good for us. They’re sitting on top of you. It’s loud. It builds excitement.

“The (XL) Center was good, but we preferred playing on campus in front of the students, because it was louder, more electric and we played in front of our friends.”

Smith led UConn with 20 points that opening Gampel night that would serve as the seventh in a 10-game winning streak. Gwynn, who especially savors a key tip-in, and Cyrulik added 13 off the bench.

“The run we had gotten on that season, no one expected,” Gwynn said. “They had us picked last in the Big East. And that bothered us. We were excited about the new building, but we were more focused on keeping that winning streak and getting to the NCAA Tournament.

“We feel our team was the foundation for getting guys like Ray Allen. We laid the foundation to the building.”

Burrell said the team practiced at Gampel for a few weeks before it opened and remembers the floor being slippery.

“Come that first night, there was so much energy, you had goosebumps,” Burrell said. “I’ll never forget that night. It helped propel the program. We never got tired playing in that building. The lighting was great. It was bright. The student just walked out of their rooms. You knew it was game time. It was electric.”

It was electric Sunday, too. Surely, this was a day why Dan Hurley took this job, why he left Rhode Island, said no to Pittsburgh and other suitors. This was a day of possibilities in front of the guys who three decades ago had that same feeling.

“The students were out, our great fans were out, they were the difference,” Hurley said. “We needed to step up today with an amazing crowd and those amazing Huskies who got this thing started here. I think it was fitting they were in the building. Now you have another group of young Huskies on the court today to start this next era that hopefully will yield a lot of the same.”