Ten years ago this month, I embarked on the greatest sports fandom journey of my life.

Perhaps “embarked” isn’t precise enough. I guess I actually continued on a journey that had started back in November 2005 when the UCLA Men’s Basketball team began the 2005-06 season and I began working on the men’s basketball beat for the Daily Bruin.

At the time, as the season began, I felt so grateful for the opportunity to cover the team, and today, 10 years later, with March Madness coming to a close, I feel even more grateful. I have so many incredible memories of that season and they start flooding back….

Nov. 23, 2005 – New York, N.Y.

Madison Square Garden. The basketball mecca. Courtside seats. And an 88-80 loss to John Calipari’s Memphis Tigers, which wasn’t close. This game was UCLA’s first true test of the season, Ben Howland’s third as head coach and one that began with reasonably high hopes. Arron Afflalo and Jordan Farmar had returned for their sophomore seasons. Cedric Bozeman ’06 and Ryan Hollins ’06 provided critical senior leadership. Darren Collison ’10 and Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, among others, provided an infusion of freshman talent. And Memphis hammered them. If this was a UCLA team with Final Four aspirations, it was clear on that cold November night in New York that there was a ton of work to be done.

Jan. 5, 2006 – Tucson, Ariz.

As 2005 came to a close, UCLA suffered a fairly demoralizing New Year’s Eve home loss to Cal for its second setback of the season, and the seeds of doubt that were sown in New York began to grow. The crop of poor form was short-lived, though, as UCLA headed to Tucson a few days later and “beared down” for an impressive 85-79 win over a good Arizona team. The Bruins ascended to the No. 12 national ranking following a weekend sweep in the desert.

Feb. 19, 2006 – Los Angeles, Calif.

Uggggggh. This is not a game that I like to re-live. UCLA played terribly and lost 71-68 at the terrible Sports Arena to a pretty terrible USC team (they were actually mediocre – about .500 that year – but there’s no way UCLA should have lost). After the game, everyone affiliated with the program was despondent. I didn’t want to do a single interview. Besides, no one wanted to be interviewed. It was…terrible. And it was particularly terrible for what it seemed – at the time, at least – to suggest about this team, just weeks before March Madness was set to begin. One loss in the NCAA Tournament ends the season, and if UCLA was capable of losing this game a few weeks before win-or-go-home time, well….

And that’s when things get good…..

March 11, 2006 – Los Angeles, Calif.

Remember when UCLA lost to Cal at Pauley Pavilion on New Year’s Eve? Yeah, me neither. Because UCLA smoked that same Bears team in the (then) Pac-10 Championship game, 71-52, at Staples Center, its seventh straight win after the terrible loss to USC. UCLA was rewarded the next day with the No. 2 seed in the West Region, and its NCAA Tournament road was set – two games in San Diego, the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 in Oakland (with Gonzaga and Memphis – remember them? – looming), and then the Final Four in Indianapolis.

March 23, 2006 – Oakland, Calif.

Do yourself a favor and watch this “UCLA vs. Gonzaga (2006 NCAA Tournament)” video and come back in five minutes and two seconds.

Back? Great. Don’t worry about the goosebumps. That’s what March Madness is all about. If you didn’t watch the video, shame on you (legendary March Madness announcer Gus Johnson coins the exclamation “HEARTBREAK CITY!”) – also, UCLA came back from 17 down to beat Gonzaga 73-71, and a certain Gonzaga Bulldog cried.

I clearly can’t articulate better than Gus Johnson how special that game was from a more macro basketball perspective, but I can try to articulate how special it was personally.

It was the first college basketball game my now-wife (Leah Regan ’06) ever attended – a high bar, for sure, that we’ve still yet to exceed. My brother, his now-wife and two of my best friends (Justin Baker-Burdett ’07, M.Ed. ’09 and Justin Barton ’07) were there. Thousands of fellow Bruin fans packed the arena. We didn’t hear Gus live, unfortunately, but we collectively shared an experience we’ll never forget – and that’s one of the things that makes sports so special. As a student reporter, I was, in theory, supposed to be objective. But as a UCLA fan, well, I cheered, and it was pretty fun to attend the Adam Morrison press conference.

March 25, 2006 – Oakland, Calif.

And so UCLA played on. The team that hung 88 on the Bruins in November scored 45 in March. UCLA upset No. 1-seeded Memphis 50-45 in the Elite Eight and punched its ticket to Indianapolis for the Final Four.

April 1, 2006 – Indianapolis, Ind.

The beat continued on, and soon I found myself in Indianapolis in a Holiday Inn Express hotel room with two other Daily Bruin writers, a Daily Bruin photographer and my three college roommates (Baker-Burdett, Trevor Peckham '07 and Matt Dixon – no Daily Bruin affiliation – free riders, really).

Indianapolis is a great venue for a Final Four. Its downtown is relatively small and walkable, and each of the Final Four teams that year – UCLA, LSU, Florida and George Mason (!) – had a designated “team hotel” located downtown. The team didn’t stay there, but it was supposed to be a location for fans to congregate.

UCLA’s hotel was, as you may suspect, the Holiday Inn Express. It had, as you may not suspect, a T.G.I. Fridays on the ground floor. I’m not sure how many beers my roommates consumed at that T.G.I. Fridays, but it was pretty clearly a substantial number.

Meanwhile, I worked. Seth Fast Glass ’06, a fellow (and better) writer, and I attended press conference after press conference and wrote story after story to fill the Daily Bruin sports pages during the days leading up to UCLA’s Final Four clash with LSU.

My roommates, with their savings from the hotel room arrangement in hand, drank beers at T.G.I. Fridays and soaked in the atmosphere of UCLA’s first Final Four since 1995. T.G.I. Fridays, apparently, was perfectly laid out for a “LUC…RICH-AAAAARD…MMMM-BAAAAH…A MOUUUUTE!” chant to echo throughout the restaurant. So there’s that.

And there was basketball, and, by that point, UCLA was playing very, very well.

Walking into the then-RCA Dome for the Final Four was a surreal experience. Here I was, a 21-year-old kid with a press pass, sitting courtside. There were my roommates, not at T.G.I. Fridays, but sitting about ten rows up behind the east basket in the UCLA student section. There was Andrew Green ’07, across the court, running things for the UCLA Yell Crew. And then, after a 59-45 UCLA victory over LSU, there were two more days to spend in Indianapolis as we readied ourselves for the NCAA Championship game.

April 3, 2006 – Indianapolis, Ind.

We know how this story ends, unfortunately. UCLA lost 73-57 to a ridiculously talented Florida team, its first loss since the USC game back in February. The post-game interviews weren’t fun. Hanging back at the RCA Dome to finish writing our post-game stories was less than enjoyable. But it was an unbelievable run, and with the benefit of hindsight, I can appreciate more and more how special it was.

March 2016 – Los Angeles, Calif.

A few weeks ago, Facebook showed me one of those “memory posts” from 10 years ago. It’s an album with photos of my roommates and me wearing mustaches because (1) college and (2) we collectively decided not to shave from the time the NCAA Tournament began to the time that UCLA lost. That turned out to be quite a long time, and my mustache turned out to be quite a great thing (despite what my wife says).

My journey with the UCLA Men’s Basketball team that season was unforgettable. It was a shared experience with great friends, and it’s always fun to look back at old photos and tell stories from that season. And so it was with other seasons as well, be it from 2007 or 2008 or 1995 or 1964.

Sports can be fun when your team is good, and even better when your team is great.

Here’s to a return to greatness…and the memories.

Go Bruins.