By Dan­ny Barletta
UConnHuskies.com
March 6, 2020

Chris­t­ian Vital and Alterique Gilbert were hon­ored at Gam­pel Pavil­ion for Senior Night, and they helped lead the Huskies to a big win over a ranked Hous­ton squad. Pho­to cour­tesy of UConn Athletics

Chris­t­ian Vital could­n’t have picked a bet­ter way to drop the mic on his UConn bas­ket­ball career at Gam­pel Pavilion.

Fig­u­ra­tive­ly and literally.

The Huskies’ senior guard gave a heart­felt speech to the sell­out crowd at Gam­pel after he and his team­mates pulled off a stun­ning 77–71 upset of No. 21 Hous­ton on Senior Night on Thurs­day in the final home game of the reg­u­lar sea­son and, bar­ring a pos­si­ble home game in the NIT, the last home game of Vital’s record-filled career. He poured in 26 points to lead the win.

An emo­tion­al Vital thanked God, his team­mates, his coach­es and the UConn faith­ful, just about all of whom remained in the stands to cel­e­brate the vic­to­ry with him.

“I appre­ci­ate y’all,” Vital said as he waved to the fans.

“Sniper out,” he said, drop­ping the mic.

Among the rest of the hon­orees Thurs­day were four-year walk-on Temi Aiyeg­busi, stu­dent assis­tant coach and for­mer play­er Mamadou Diar­ra, grad­u­ate head man­agers Paul Wet­te­mann and Justin Ead­dy, and, of course, the team’s two vet­er­an lead­ers – Vital and Alterique Gilbert.

Both play­ers would turn in mem­o­rable per­for­mances on their spe­cial night, help­ing the Huskies pick up their biggest win of the season.

Gilbert had nine points, three rebounds, two assists, a steal and a block, and he real­ly helped pace the offense as the pri­ma­ry ball­han­dler. His best moment was fak­ing a Hous­ton defend­er out of his shoes with a crossover and going around him for the easy layup.

Even though Gilbert has a year of eli­gi­bil­i­ty left as a red­shirt junior, he was hon­ored as a senior with Vital, since both will grad­u­ate in May. The two came in togeth­er four years ago, and Vital said shar­ing that moment was special.

“That’s my boy, he’s been through a lot,” Vital said. “He came in a McDon­ald’s All-Amer­i­can, high­ly tout­ed, went through some injuries, but he per­se­vered … I learned a lot from Al since our time being here: how to per­se­vere, how to face adver­si­ty head on. It’s gonna hit you some­times. You’re gonna have hard times, it’s nev­er gonna just be per­fect straight through. But the way he played tonight, that’s the Al I know.”

Gilbert has had a very unique career at UConn to this point. Mul­ti­ple shoul­der surg­eries required him to miss all but nine games of his first two sea­sons in Storrs, but in the past two years, he’s become a valu­able con­trib­u­tor to this pro­gram, both as a play­er and as a leader.

But the hero of Thurs­day’s big win was Vital, whose 26 points includ­ed eight con­sec­u­tive clutch free throws in the final minute to ice the game. He was able to show off for the fans at Gam­pel one last time on the night that his career and accom­plish­ments as a Husky were honored.

“It meant a lot,” Vital said. “Just every­thing the pro­gram has been through, some of my team­mates have been through, some of the stuff that I’ve been through per­son­al­ly, to be able to win like that in front of a crowd like that on a night like this, it meant a lot. I’ll remem­ber it for a long time.”

Vital has qui­et­ly put togeth­er one of the best four-year careers in UConn his­to­ry, and the admi­ra­tion that the fan base has for him was evi­dent by the stand­ing ova­tion he received when address­ing the crowd after the game. He thanked them for their sup­port through the ups and downs but made sure to note that the team is not fin­ished yet.

Includ­ing Thurs­day’s per­for­mance, Vital has now amassed 1,707 points, 657 rebounds, 268 assists and 213 steals, mak­ing him one of the most ver­sa­tile play­ers in pro­gram his­to­ry. No oth­er play­er with over 1,700 points in a UConn uni­form can also boast 650 rebounds, 250 assists and 200 steals.

With his 26 points on Thurs­day, Vital moved into the top 10 all time in UConn scor­ing, sur­pass­ing his good friend and three-year team­mate Jalen Adams (1,706).

“That’s a lit­tle crazy, right?” Vital said. “That’s my broth­er ’til the end. That’s my broth­er until we take our last breath. He means a lot to me. He had to car­ry a large load that was­n’t the eas­i­est dur­ing his time here. I wish we could’ve end­ed it bet­ter for his senior year, but tonight was kind of for him, too.”

Vital is also third all-time in steals and sec­ond all time in 3‑pointers made with 262. How­ev­er, he does­n’t want to be remem­bered for his stats.

“[I want to be remem­bered] just as a guy who did­n’t quit, who believed in him­self from day one and refused to not believe in him­self,” Vital said. “But also put in the work to see those results come to reality.”

Although Gilbert and Vital had­n’t been a part of a win­ning sea­son dur­ing their times at UConn until this year, head coach Dan Hur­ley said they dras­ti­cal­ly impact­ed the program.

“They’re the foun­da­tion of what’s gonna hap­pen next for us, which is gonna be a lot more nights like this,” Hur­ley said. “They’ve helped us instill a stan­dard that in last year’s tran­si­tion year, we could­n’t get to that point with the group because we had­n’t spent enough time together.”

Specif­i­cal­ly, Hur­ley said Vital will always have a spe­cial place in UConn history.

“He’s a guy that we’ll talk about both in the near future with teams and down the line when we get back to being what UCon­n’s sup­posed to look [like] and say that this was the year that the stan­dard got back to being the stan­dard,” Hur­ley said.

It was cer­tain­ly a spe­cial night in Gam­pel. The fans came out in mass­es to sup­port Vital, Gilbert and the rest of the seniors, and the atmos­phere real­ly willed the team to a huge win.

“I’ve been in this build­ing when Jim [Cal­houn] was the coach,” Hous­ton head coach Kelvin Samp­son said. “It sound­ed like the old days in there tonight.”

Out of the 126 games that Vital has played in so far in his career, where does this one rank?

“Num­ber one,” he said. “For now.”