"Who remembers the 1988-89 Siena men's basketball team? And who remembers where they were the day the Saints marched into the NCAA Tournament for the first time by beating Boston University in an empty Hartford Civic Center due to a measles outbreak that started in Loudonville?"I don't actually remember where I was that day, just reading about it in the paper the next day, or that the tournament was in what is now the XL Center. Not only did the tournament have no spectators, but its winner had no nickname most of the year, as Siena had dropped its Indians name that season and didn't choose its current Saints moniker right away.
I do remember it being an exciting time for all of us in the towns small and large around Albany, NY, as Siena's Loudonville campus is just a short ride up the Northway from New York's capital city. (Rob still lives a stone's throw from the campus, and I used to live a couple miles away.)
Like a lot of New York, except for maybe the immediate New York City area, I grew up in Syracuse country. When Syracuse won the 2003 national championship, they played the East Regional in Albany, and the only way they could have had a bigger home-court advantage was if the games were in the Carrier Dome itself.
Yes, the RPI men's hockey team won the 1985 national title, but where I grew up, big-time college sports meant Syracuse, much in the same way that professional sports mostly means the New York City teams and the Buffalo Bills, at least when the Bills are good. Rob has actually lamented on this often over the years.
And then Siena came along. I was a high school junior, and my social studies teacher/baseball coach promised us that if Siena beat Stanford in their first-round NCAA tournament game, we wouldn't have a quiz the next day. During baseball practice, we got the news ... Siena had done it! I happened to be standing next to the coach when we found out, and he sort of gave me a hug.
(Because of the quiz being called off, I've always remembered that the game was on a Thursday, because our quizzes were Fridays.)
We taped the game at my house, and as soon as I got home from practice, we all watched it together. If memory serves, CBS had the rights for all the tournament games back then, but didn't produce all of them for broadcast, including the Siena-Stanford game, so the NCAA produced the game in-house and made it available locally on the CBS affiliate.
It was amazing to watch back then -- and I am so going to have to watch the video of the game linked to above -- but not just because the local team pulled off the huge upset. It was almost certainly the first time in my and my friends' lives, and probably the first time for most of the people I knew, that our region had hit the big time in sports.
Siena has made other NCAA tournaments since then, and even sprung another big tournament upset. Of course, they were all exciting, but for me, there will be nothing like standing in my high school gym, next to my baseball coach, and having someone tell us that Siena had just knocked off Stanford.
* * * * *
Things haven't been as good for the Saints lately. Their history since the mid-1980s has been success when they get the right coach (Mike Deane, Paul Hewitt, Louis Orr, Fran McCaffery) and failure when they don't (Bob Beyer, Rob Lanier, the recently fired Mitch Buonaguro). However, the University at Albany Great Danes have stepped into the Capital Region void, advancing to this morning's America East championship against Vermont.
My master's degree is from UAlbany, but I'd be lying if I said I have especially fond memories of the place. It wasn't horrible, but the good times were more about living on my own in an apartment for the first time, the woman I dated at the time (no, not the one who ultimately became Mrs. Last Honest) and the radio station I worked at for my graduate internship and the friends I made there.
As for the actual grad-school experience? Meh. I went to my office hours for my advising job in the communication department, went to classes and went home. I don't have any friends among my professors or classmates, and if I talk about it, it's mostly about the idiot undergrads I dealt with. (I once had one threaten to sue because I wouldn't let her keep an advising appointment for missing a mandatory meeting that was cleverly called the "mandatory meeting" and spelled out in black-and-white on a letter. Her excuse? She hadn't read that far.)
It's basically the difference between a school being a place where you go and a place where you are, such as my undergrad days.
So I haven't really kept up with the Danes. I don't know who anyone is on their team. I'm glad to see that Will Brown is still the coach, though.
But today? With a chance to go to the NCAA tournament? I'm watching ESPN2 as I type, and today, I change from an ambivalent alum to an excited one.
Is it jumping on a bandwagon?
Yup.
Do I care?
What do you think?
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