Editor's Note: The views and opinions expressed in this article do not reflect those of The Collegian.
It’s hard to describe exactly how much University of Richmond basketball means to me.
If you walked into my Gateway Village apartment room on campus, you’d definitely see it in the Grant Golden jersey hanging in my closet or the Matt Grace flag hanging on the wall above my bed.
But to put it in words is a much more difficult task.
When I reflect on my time watching and covering the Spiders over the last four years, a famous line from the movie Moneyball comes to mind.
Brad Pitt, who plays the movie’s main character, General Manager of the Oakland Athletics Billy Beane, is watching game film with Jonah Hill’s character and says, “How can you not be romantic about baseball?”
And that’s how I feel about Spider basketball. How can you not be romantic about Spider basketball?
I’ve spent countless hours thinking about, writing about and filling legal pad pages with statistics about Spider basketball.
It all started my first year on campus. I still remember my first game.
Immediately you could tell there was something magical about the Robins Center and the fact that the student section was packed despite being a small liberal arts school of just 3,200 undergraduate students. It’s a magic I felt during my first year and a magic I still felt this year as a senior.
I remember being especially psyched to hear Golden’s name called in the starting lineup. He was a sixth-year graduate student at the time, and while we didn’t overlap, he attended the same boarding school I did in Maryland. So immediately, I had to rep the guy who shared my alma mater, who my parents taught and who I remember watching as a middle schooler.
That year ended in an Atlantic 10 championship and a March Madness appearance for the men’s basketball team.
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Electric doesn’t even begin to describe what seeing the Spiders on a national stage meant to me as a first-year student.
What I remember most from that time, however, is not skipping my history class to attend the watch party in the Robins Center, and the storming of the court that followed the Spiders’ upset over the University of Iowa.
It’s not my sister, Mary, being banished to the basement during the Spiders’ semifinal game against the University of Dayton and sacrificing watching for fear of being a jinx, either.
It was a one-off moment I remember seeing captured on the men’s basketball team’s Instagram account. A random, yet profound moment, that perfectly encapsulated why I love Spider basketball so much.
This moment took place before the Spiders were set to take on Dayton for a chance to play in the A-10 championship.
UR was the six-seed in the tournament, and this was win or go home. For some on the roster, it was also win or end their collegiate career. All that this group had dealt with as a result of the pandemic – including a pending postseason berth stripped away from them – no doubt was heavy on their hearts.
Jacob Gilyard, another super senior on that storied 2021-22 team, was in the middle of the huddle when the social media account captured him saying, “I packed ‘til Sunday.”
I packed ‘til Sunday.
Four words that get me fired up even now.
What Gilyard was getting at was that even though the Spiders entered the tournament as the six-seed, and even though they would have to win four games in four days to pull off what seemed like an improbable feat to ultimately hoist that A-10 trophy, he had confidence that they could pull it off.
Gilyard planned to be there until Sunday, playing in the championship, and was making it known that the Spiders deserved to be there.
It’s such an isolated moment, and probably doesn’t mean much to anyone else, but I think about it often. I remember writing Gilyard’s quote at the top of the stat sheet I kept while watching this particular game at my house in Maryland on the final Saturday of Spring Break.
I think it serves as the perfect example of what Spider basketball is all about.
We may not be the biggest school, and our team may not make a run in March Madness every year like a Duke University or a University of North Carolina. But what the Spiders do have is that “giant killer” mentality, stemming all the way back to the days of Johnny Newman and the late, great Greg Beckwith in the ‘80s. That dynamic duo famously took down Hall-of-Famer Charles Barkley and Auburn University in the Big Dance.
It just means more at a smaller school and for a mid-major program. Seeing the Spiders make it happen, and those super seniors get that ever-elusive “one shining moment,” was magical beyond belief.
It’s little moments like those that have defined a lot of my time as a fan of the Spiders, and in turn as a student at UR. And I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Yes, the transfer portal and NIL [Name, Image and Likeness] have altered the college basketball landscape. In fact, I’m old enough to remember when UR used to be a destination, not a pit stop – a place where people stayed for their entire collegiate careers and were able to build something like Gilyard and Golden and that class of super seniors did.
Unfortunately, that is no longer the case.
Just look at the most recent 2024-25 squad. Only one player from that 2021-22 March Madness team was on this year’s roster. One player.
Despite these changes, however, it’s Spider basketball. New rules and new trends or not, it’s still Spider basketball.
And how could you not be romantic about it all?
How could you not be romantic about hearing “Levels” by Avicii reverberating through the Robins Center, hyping everyone up before the tip?
How could you not be romantic about the fan – who’s probably been coming to Spider basketball games for decades – starting the “We Are UR” chant and getting the whole arena to join him?
How could you not be romantic about women’s basketball star Addie Budnik deciding to come back for a fifth year – the lone member of her class to do so, as everyone else jumped ship – and helping the Spiders to their second-straight March Madness appearance?
I may be done with covering games for The Collegian, but my love for Spider basketball is a fire that will burn for the rest of my life – one that will continue to be stoked with each new season, seeing and believing in those teams every year like the ones who made my time at UR so incredibly special.
Whether it’s in the student section or on press row, it’s Roll ‘Ders forever.
So consider this my tip of the hat and love letter to Spider basketball, four years in the making.
Contact contributor Jimmy James at jimmy.james@richmond.edu.
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