UConn Believed in ‘Leprechaun’

He had requested vacation for this special weekend more than a year ago, even though his team had never made the Final Four. Connecticut gave Joe McGinn a reason for hope.

He had traveled to the Big East tournament earlier this month with his wheelchair and a suitcase packed with dialysis equipment. Connecticut gave him a reason to cheer.

When the NCAA tournament brackets came out, he eagerly readied his lucky blue cap, his gray sweatshirt, his stuffed Husky for the grueling trip to St. Petersburg, Fla. Connecticut gave him courage.

Then on March 9, the large heart inside tiny McGinn, the 26-year-old former Connecticut basketball manager, suddenly stopped forever.

Saturday night, his mother was preparing to write a thank-you note to the school when her phone rang.

Imagine her surprise to hear the voice of UConn Coach Jim Calhoun, whose team had just defeated Gonzaga to qualify for its first Final Four and fulfill her late son’s dream.

Imagine her surprise when he told her that her son’s picture was posted in their locker room.

When he told her that her son’s name was the first thing mentioned during the postgame speech.

When he tearfully thanked her.

*

Can Connecticut figure out a way to beat Duke?

Even though both teams are still 40 minutes from a possible national championship showdown Monday night, that is the question everybody is asking.

Connecticut knows one thing. Joe McGinn would have figured out a way to beat Duke.

“You think of him, and you want to leave everything you got on the court, because he would,” guard Ricky Moore said.

“Just thinking of him,” center Jake Voskuhl said, “gives me goose bumps.”

He paused, pointed to his bare legs, and sure enough, there they were, as poignant as any eulogy.

“‘You see?” he said. “He is with this team right now.”

Back in Bristol, his mother had chills for a different reason.

“I just can’t believe they are saying those things,” she said. “Of course, as our own son, he was very special to us. But to hear able-bodied kids saying that he inspired them?”

Today, those kids wear a black patch on their jerseys in McGinn’s memory.

He was 5 feet 2, 118 pounds, with red hair. He was diagnosed with kidney disease at age 3, and eventually stopped growing, but never stopped dreaming.

In sixth grade, he was so convinced he was going to be the next Michael Jordan, he signed Jordan’s name to all of his classwork during a weeklong stay by a substitute teacher.

When the school finally figured it out, the principal called Michael Jordan to the office, and McGinn begrudgingly surrendered.

The first milestone in his life was a kidney transplant at age 16.

The second was meeting Calhoun during a visit to a Connecticut basketball game when he was a senior in high school.

The team won that night, Calhoun took a liking to McGinn--”He was like, their leprechaun,” said his mother--and two years later he transferred from Northeastern to become Calhoun’s manager at Connecticut.

The next three years of his life were perhaps the best ones. He did everything from grab towels to chart practices to give encouragement.

“He felt normal,” his mother said. “All his life, he wanted just to be normal, and that is exactly how Jim Calhoun treated him.”

He would sometimes take a buddy down to the empty Gampel Pavilion court after practice, and together they would bounce balls up and down and pretend they were the stars that Joe always hoped to be.

The players became not only his job, but his family.

“If you were hurt, Joe was the one person who would always stay by your side, pushing you to come back, not giving up on you,” senior guard Rashamel Jones said. “He was sick, but he only cared about you.”

Even though his transplant medication caused rare side effects that made him increasingly sicker.

In his senior year, the week before the annual celebration in which senior Huskies and their families are introduced before the game, McGinn underwent major kidney surgery.

He didn’t leave the hospital until two days before the game, and nurses predicted he would not be strong enough to attend.

“But he said no way, he would not miss it for anything,” recalled his mother.

His sister put on his suit and shoes. His parents helped him into the car. Together, they walked on to pavilion floor that night with such stars as future NBA player Ray Allen.

And the loudest cheers were for . . . “Ray Allen, of course,” said Sheila McGinn. “I was so proud of my son but, I mean, compared to the other players, he was just a pipsqueak.”

If only she knew.

“I told her mother, all these years, I cheated her,” Calhoun said. “She talks about us giving him courage and inspiration--those are the things I got from Joe.”

Never more so than last spring, three years after McGinn graduated, when he was faced with amputation of both legs because of complications with his transplanted kidney.

During his time away from school, he had taken a job in the graphics department at ESPN, but he still came to many home games, still hung out in the locker room.

“He was one of these guys who was just always around,” head manager Josh Nochimson said. “The players loved him. They were used to seeing him. Even after he left, he was always there for them.”

And so when it came time for McGinn to make his decision on the amputations, Calhoun was there for him, in the hospital room, just the two of them.

“Joey never did tell me what Coach Calhoun told him,” said his mother.

McGinn agreed to the double amputation, and he cried, and Calhoun cried, and the last year of his life was a battle to adjust.

“He hated having to sit in the wheelchair sections,” his mother said. “He didn’t want much. All he wanted to be was a normal person, walk around, do things like other people did.”

Calhoun and McGinn grew ever closer, speaking frequently on the phone, about recruits or injuries or merely gossip.

“When Joey would go to a game, afterward Coach would walk away from reporters to talk to him,” recalled buddy Dave Polochanin. “Those two shared something special.”

Calhoun took his team to see McGinn in the hospital after the operation. The first thing Joe did was holler at Richard Hamilton for even thinking about turning pro before his junior year.

When he showed up at the Big East tournament this year, the team was happy and relieved. They were even more excited when he loudly ripped St. John’s.

“It was so good to see him, as sick as he was, still fighting,” Jones said. “It made all of us really think.”

By then, his transplanted kidney had deteriorated such that he was undergoing dialysis four times a day. He and Polochanin even performed the procedure in his hotel room in New York during the Big East tournament, so he could attend the games.

“We didn’t know it at the time, but this was his last hurrah,” Polochanin said.

After Connecticut whipped St. John’s to win the tournament, McGinn was the first one called by Calhoun when the NCAA pairings were announced.

“They talked for 20 minutes like old buddies, talking about the brackets, like they always did,” his mother said.

Two days later, after returning from the doctor with a note that he could return to work, McGinn suffered a heart attack in his bed during the middle of the day, dying in his mother’s arms.

The team had just landed in Denver to begin the NCAA tournament.

During a meeting in Ricky Moore’s room, they were given the news. Everyone broke down.

“His body had been fighting for so long, it just finally couldn’t fight any more,” Calhoun said.

Because the team could not fly back for the funeral, the Huskies attended a special team-only memorial service at the nearby Air Force Academy.

Calhoun sent McGinn’s parents his Big East championship watch, and it was put on McGinn’s wrist for burial.

Little else was said, until Saturday, when the memory of Joe McGinn came pouring out with the sweat of the most important victory of any of their lives.

Although nobody can figure out who sent them--”It wasn’t me,” his mother said--prayer cards with McGinn’s name showed up in the locker room before the game.

Immediately afterward, the first thing Calhoun told his team was, “This one’s for Joe.”

Then he made the phone call to Bristol.

“Your son will be there in St. Petersburg with us,” he told his parents. “He’ll have the best seat in the house.”

Right there underneath their jerseys. Right in front of his parents, who are being flown to Florida by Calhoun to take their son’s place.

That was some pipsqueak.

SATURDAY

CONNECTICUT vs. OHIO STATE / 2:30 p.m.

DUKE vs. MICHIGAN STATE / 5 p.m.

TV: CBS