To cheer for Duke basketball you may wear your Duke T-shirts and sweatshirts, and hats with that famous Iron Dukes D. But if you want to get some attention at Cameron? You want to wear a 1940s-era Duke letter sweater, blue with a lovely white block D. That’s what Tom Connelly Jr. M.H.A.’67 wore to the Duke men’s basketball game against Pitt on Jan. 7. Because of the sweater, he was invited courtside at halftime and invited to take a shot.
“I thought [they] wanted me to dribble down and take a layup, like my dad did,” said Connelly, a retired college dean. “I said, ‘No way, I’m not going to do that.’”
His dad, you see, was Thomas Connelly ’41, captain of the Duke men’s basketball team in 1941. He played in the latter years of the reign of coach Eddie Cameron and became more famous as a radio color commentator for Duke sports and as the organizer of alumni trips to away games. But he also took the very first shot in Cameron Indoor Stadium varsity basketball play, a layup.
And he missed it.
Tom Jr. was not interested in repeating the miss.
“I haven’t picked up a basketball in 20 years – I was afraid I couldn’t get it to the rim,” he said.
In reality, he had been offered a free throw for charity. Connelly let the Blue Devil take it.
But his dad’s old letter sweater was a hit with surrounding fans. “I didn’t even know we had it for a long time,” Connelly said. Then years ago a day of closet cleaning unearthed it. He didn’t want to wear it all the time and didn’t want to flaunt it, he said, “I decided that the only time I would wear that sweater in public was when Duke beat Carolina. That would be a symbol of a quiet thumb in your face” to those other guys. This year, then, he’s had the chance to wear it quite a bit. His wife bought him tickets to the Pitt game for Christmas, and the game happened to be 85 years and a day after his dad missed that first shot. He mentioned it to some Duke sports folks during the game, which led to his being courtside at halftime.
“They introduced me and, you know, when they said 1940 I don’t know if the crowd thought it was me that was from 1940 or the sweater, but that big, big roar went up when they heard that number.” And Connelly Jr. did not risk repeating his dad’s miss.
He probably made a wise move. When Connelly the elder was back at Cameron in 1975, a photographer asked him to try the shot again. He missed it. Several times.
Then he made one. So the last Connelly shot taken in Cameron remains a success. Like the sweater.