I’ve started reading the voluminous Radoslav and Corinne Tsanoff correspondence in earnest recently and it has turned out to be both magnificent and exhausting, covering everything from Klan and anti-Klan parades to little Katherine’s ear infections. (I’m just thankful that both had clear handwriting.) So for a break from the 1920s this afternoon I turned to things of more recent days and my attention was caught by this joyful image, dated 1992:
It didn’t take long to discover the cause of this happy moment. From the March 13, 1992 Thresher, a description of the Owls season ending victory over the University of Texas. Note that Dana Hardy, the source of the title quote, was playing in front of his mother:
If I’m counting right this was Rice’s first 20-win season since 1954. That’s happened twice since then, first under Willis Wilson in the ’04 season, then pretty recently under Mike Rhodes in ’17.
I remember this ‘92 game well and the excitement that playing other major Texas universities on a regular, yearly basis brought to the Rice campus. Those were surely the halcyon days of Rice basketball that we of the Rice athletics family let slip away.
I was at the ’92 Texas game. The atmosphere at Autry that night was crazy fun.