Forty years ago, Steve Hisey - then a student at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga - stood beneath a lamp post on a snowy street in Springfield, Mass., determined to remain there until he'd, um, borrowed a peach basket that was attached to that streetlight.
"I wasn't leaving until I got that peach basket," he said as he recalled that 1977 March weekend in New England. "I also threw snowballs at a marquee sign until I knocked off the letter 'U' to go with the 'T' and the 'C' I'd gotten. Several people got a 'T' and a 'C,' but I'm the only one who got all three letters."
And where is that peach basket and those letters today?
"They're all in my house," Hisey said last Friday. "And the basket is signed by the players, the coaches and the cheerleaders."
They all have their stories and their memories of UTC's 1977 NCAA Division II national champion men's basketball team. Sweet memories. Timeless memories.
That's sports at its best, and those of us fortunate enough to spend some time with a few of those former UTC players, coaches and managers during their 40th reunion this past weekend know those memories have only gotten better with age.
For Darrell Patterson, the recently retired, longtime sports anchor at Channel 9 who helped call that game for local television, then-coach Ron Shumate's frustration over a different marquee sign's removable plastic letters never will be forgotten.
"You need to understand that with Coach Shumate it was always about 'U-T-C' - UT-Chattanooga," Patterson explained. "The word 'Chattanooga' was very important to him as he built the program.
"So we're on a road trip somewhere and we pull the bus into the hotel and on the hotel sign it says, 'Welcome University of Tennessee.' Shumate sees it and says, 'We're not getting off this bus until they change that sign to Welcome UT-Chattanooga.' And we didn't."
Another Shumate road-trip moment: Before a game at Tennessee Wesleyan one year, the Mocs arrived in Athens to find an incredibly warm gym. Knowing that UTC post player Sylvester Davenport was fighting the flu, Shumate screamed "Dwain!" for Wesleyan coach Dwain Farmer as soon as he arrived.
Farmer said something about wanting to make sure Davenport didn't get too cold given his illness.
The Mocs pulled out a win, but on the way out of town Shumate told his team to get a good look at that gym because "that's the last time you'll ever see it."
True to his word, the Mocs never played there again.
Scobey Peterman lives in Sweetwater, Tenn., but as a UTC student in those days, "I watched every home game I could get into. It wasn't always easy. Big Mac (Maclellan Gym) was always sold out. But this (reunion) means everything. These guys were our neighbors in the Village (dorms). They were our friends."
His college roommate, current juvenile court clerk Gary Behler, has bought UTC football and basketball season tickets for more than 30 years.
Both he and Peterman wish the school would consider playing an exhibition game every year in Maclellan, complete with throwback uniforms, as a way to honor the 1977 champs, as well as attempt to recreate the impassioned atmosphere that existed in Big Mac back then.
"Maybe play Tennessee Wesleyan or somebody," Behler said Saturday. "Just to show people what the energy was like in that building."
But fun as that sounds, attempting to recapture the electricity of that moment in time, the magic of a first championship season would be difficult, if not impossible.
"It was like a giant snowball rolling downhill," Patterson said of that season. "By the time they got to Springfield, I didn't see any way they weren't going to win it."
Longtime UTC booster Pam Henry and her husband Sam were so determined to watch the Mocs win that "We drove from Knoxville, where we'd just moved, to Athens (Tenn.) because that was the closest place we could watch the game on television. So we got a hotel room and spent the night."
Hisey, this newspaper's David Jenkins, Jeff Masingill (Luther's son) and Mitch Wilkerson drove to Springfield, the birthplace of basketball, which is why peach baskets hung from the street lamps.
"We were probably the only fans who drove," Hisey said of the 16-hour trip one way. "We'd driven to Evansville (Ind.) the year before (when UTC lost in the title game to Puget Sound). So there was no way we were going to miss this one."
They were rewarded for their efforts, as the Mocs beat Randolph-Macon 71-62 in the championship game.
"The game was Saturday night, but we made it back to class by Monday morning," Hisey said. "It was crazy, but I wouldn't trade it for anything in my life other than the birth of my son."
The Chattanooga airport was so filled with fans when the team returned home that Sunday that the players weren't sure what to do.
So senior Gary Stich grabbed the trophy and held it high as he exited the airplane.
"They want to see the trophy," he told his teammates. "So I went first."
He also got the championship net, which he still keeps in his hometown of Louisville.
For his part, Shumate is proud of what the school has accomplished since moving to Division I the following season.
"I'd like to think we played some role in that," he said, "as well as the building of the Roundhouse (McKenzie Arena)."
As he watched his heroes honored at halftime of UTC's Southern Conference loss to East Tennessee State on Saturday, Behler said of his favorite Mocs: "That team lit our fire for UTC basketball."
And as this past weekend proved, for all those old enough to have experienced 1977, the joy of that championship season still burns as bright as ever.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.