BYU was going to play basketball against UConn over the weekend at TD Garden (the same place the Celtics play). UConn’s a perennially good basketball team, and this year is supposed to be a great year for BYU, as well. (But if I’m being honest, it wouldn’t have mattered how good or bad BYU was this year. If they’re in reasonable driving distance, I’m going to do what I can to go watch them play.) Denisa and Daniela were busy with a church dance, but Michaela was up for the trip, so the two of us and a friend headed down on Saturday to watch the game unfold.
We made the trek, both bedecked in BYU blue. I wore my old jacket from my BYU Marching Band days, and I got a number of compliments on the vintage style. (Look, people. It’s very (very) rare that anyone compliments anything I wear, seeing as how I almost always just wear the same thing. So to have people come up to me and ask me about my clothes is a rare occurrence, and worth noting.)
I’d never been to TD Garden before. Sports tickets are expensive, and I’m just not a big enough fan of professional sports to really make time or carve out a budget for it. It’s a nice arena. We had seats up in the balcony, and we could see pretty well. The crowd was heavily weighted toward UConn, though probably about 1/5 or so were BYU fans. Not bad of a showing for a team that’s so far away from home. (I talked to a few UConn fans who were sitting by us, and they were very surprised we had as many fans there as we did. They wondered if we all flew out to watch the game. I suppose some of the fans might have, but I’d be surprised if it were more than a handful.)
The game itself was . . . less than ideal for the first 33 minutes. We were already down one starter due to team rules violations, and we lost another when he got hit in the head early on in the game. We then proceeded to shoot terribly, and UConn was on fire. We were down by 20 at one point, and the UConn crowd was going wild. Seeing as how it took a 3+ hour drive and a short subway ride to get there, I was definitely second guessing my decision to come right about then. Michaela was really feeling down, and it was all pretty bleak, in sports terms.
Thankfully, the team totally turned things around, rushing back to (ultimately) lose by 2 points. The last 7 minutes of the game were thrilling. A great performance by the Cougars, and much more of what I’d hoped to see from the outing. That helped Michaela’s spirits tremendously, as well.
Even better, they timed the football game just right, so I could tune into the opening drive just as I was leaving the parking lot heading home. (Listened to it on the KSL app.) And that game was fantastic for the Y. It would have been incredible if the basketball team could have pulled off the win, but going into a heavily favored away crowd against the #3 team in the country, and coming out showing we could go toe to toe with them? That’s almost as good. 🙂