By Michael Belmont
Gargoyle sports editor
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2006,The OG, sports

This weekend everybody set back their clocks an hour, but for a large segment of the Uni community at Kenney Gym on Monday night it was as if time had turned back a few years.

Throngs of Uni students, both past and present, as well as a significant contigent of faculty, parents of both current students and alumni, and other friends and family mingled happily as the A team of former Uni basketball players took the floor against the visiting Konan Boys High School team visiting this week from Japan.

Before the alum game, what looked to be Konan's junior varsity squad took on East Central Illinois Conference opponent Normal Calvary Baptist, losing by about 15 points.

At 7:30 p.m., Al Renner, Austin Berger, and Zhe Gao from the Class of 2006, Henry Pollock and Yang Zhou from the Class of 2005, Matt Sutton and Bo Li from the Class of 2003, and Amit Sudarshan from the Class of 2002 tipped off against what seemed to be Konan's A-team. Also playing in a Uni jersey was Jeremy Stevens, a boys assistant basketball coach for the school during the 2003-04 and 2004-05 seasons and a former standout at Monticello High School.

In the first half the game was excitingly close as the alums fought to preserve a small lead. The Konan boys pushed especially hard in the second quarter, and trailed the alums by only three points at halftime, 30-27.

However, the alums seemed to find their second wind in the second half and pulled ahead dramatically in the third quarter with a series of quick fast breaks that were the hallmark of Uni's teams from the past couple years. When the final buzzer sounded, the alums had won 74-47, and as the players left the court smiling it was almost as if this were another Uni home victory of the recent past.