STORRS, Conn. (AP) - It was at a game at the Hartford Civic Center in 1982. UConn trailed by a couple of points and coach Dom Perno called a timeout.
The UConn cheerleaders came out on the floor to lead the crowd in a cheer. Only nobody cheered.
“I felt so bad for the cheerleaders,” Tom Emery recalled, “I stood up and yelled, ‘Are you ready!?’ When I yelled it, a couple of sections went along with me and did it. And I didn’t even know what I was doing.”
All Emery was doing was kicking off perhaps the most time-honored tradition of UConn basketball. Before long, Emery - you know him better as “Big Red” - was leading crowds in Hartford and, later, Gampel Pavilion in his patented “U-C-O-N-N!!!” chant at virtually every UConn men’s game.
“That’s the way it started,” Emery recalled on Sunday. “And it just went further and further than that.”
It was “Big Red Day” on Sunday at Gampel Pavilion, as UConn honored Emery, a 1973 Sheehan High graduate who never attended UConn but will forever be linked to the school.
“I’m very humbled by it,” Emery said. “To me, the day is not about me, it’s about all 10,000 in this place and the other 16,000 in the (XL) Center. I’m glad I can lead what they do, but I’m just a fan. So, for me to be singled out, I don’t think it’s right for the rest of the fans. But, they did it, and I’m just so humbled by it, it’s hard to explain.”
Emery, who started attending UConn games in 1973 and became a season-ticket holder a couple of years later, grew up in Wallingford and now lives in Meriden. He works in Wallingford as a business account representative, selling custom plaques for That’s Great News. But that’s not the reason why Emery is a mini-celebrity in Connecticut - and anywhere else there are UConn fans, from Florida to the Midwest.
“People in UConn Nation know who I am,” he said on Sunday.
As if on cue, Ellen Daley of Manchester approaches Emery in the concourse at Gampel prior to Sunday’s game, asking him to sign one of the “Big Red” t-shirt distributed to fans.
“That part’s fun,” Emery said. “A lot of fun.”
There’s a science to when Emery leads his “Big Red” cheers each game. Typically, it comes when the Huskies take a lead or make a good play, and the opponent calls a timeout. Emery feels a certain vibe growing from the crowd, the camera zeroes in on him in his seat (Section 113 at Gampel) and he leads the “U-C-O-N-N” cheer .
“After 45 years, you learn when is a good time to pull it off” he said. “Because you want the crowd to follow you. You don’t want the crowd to not be with you.”
On Sunday, his first chance came with 5:07 left in the first half, after Christian Vital hit a tough left-handed driving basket and USF coach Brian Gregory called a timeout.
His second chance came at midcourt at halftime, when he was introduced by announcer Conor Geary, gave a short speech thanking the fans (“You’re definitely a second family to me”), and received an autographed, commemorative UConn basketball from athletic director David Benedict.
Emery then led the crowd in his patented cheer, where he forms his arms in the letters “U-C-O-N-N” while the crowd chants those letters. He remembers the day he created that cheer.
“I threw my arms in the air to say, ‘Come on!’,” Emery recalled. “When I did that, everybody went, ‘U!!!’ So, I said, well I’ve got to do something to make it look right. I threw my arms in every way and said, somehow I’ve got to get an ‘N’ out of it. So, I moved my arms up and down, tried to make an ‘N’, and it just fell into place.”
It’s been falling into place for some 38 years now, as much a time-honored tradition as anything else in UConn basketball history.
“I’m very humbled by it,” Tom “Big Red” Emery said of his big day, “but I’m no better than any fan in this building. That’s the way I feel.”
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