With two and a half minutes left in SMU’s 80-54 win vs. Connecticut, SMU fans saw the moment they had imagined all week: One by one, SMU’s seniors exited a game at Moody Coliseum for the final time in their careers. As Nic Moore exited to a standing ovation, he stopped to hug Markus Kennedy by the scorer’s table. Both stopped to embrace head coach Larry Brown before taking a seat on the SMU bench.
After the game ended, the sellout Moody crowd stayed in anticipation of something else: SMU’s three seniors, Moore, Kennedy and Jordan Tolbert, were going to speak to the crowd. Moore, wearing gold shoes that seemed perfectly fit for the moment, headed to center court for the final time. He took the microphone and looked around the arena, seeing fans still on their feet, cheering.
Moore thought back to his first season at SMU, 2012-13. He and Kennedy were sitting out the season after transferring from Illinois State and Villanova, respectively. Back then, drawing 7,303 fans seemed like the most unrealistic of dreams.
“I always messed around with Markus that when we first got here, we would count how many people were in the stands,” Moore told the fans Thursday night.
SMU’s first game of the 2012-13 season, in which SMU went 15-17, was a 73-58 win vs. Loyola Marymount on a Sunday afternoon in November. Relegated to the bench, Moore and Kennedy could only count the fans as Brown won his first game as SMU’s head coach. Not even Brown looks at the experience as one that created many positive memories.
“(Associate head coach) Tim (Jankovich) and I stood there and both said, ‘What the hell are we doing here?’” Brown said. “I can only imagine what those guys were thinking.”
Four years later, Moore and Kennedy’s last game couldn’t have been more of a contrast to their first: Their last game is a Thursday primetime game with a standing-room only crowd that included Dallas Cowboys head coach Jason Witten, Cowboys tight end Jason Witten, four SMU football alumni playing in the NFL and former President George W. Bush. The 43rd President and his wife, Laura, are Moody regulars now. Their last game is in a warm, inviting atmosphere that felt like one big family. Their last game was a blowout win vs. a program that has won four national championships since 1999.
“Just to see the impact, the mark we’ve left; to see people in their seats from the sidelines to the top of the rafters all the way around. Seeing them cheering for us, I was trying not to break down,” Moore said.
The contrast between Nov. 11, 2012 and March 3, 2016 is a fitting one for Moore and Kennedy’s careers. The duo came to SMU without much recognition and couldn’t play for a year. Now, they have won 50 games at Moody Coliseum and are each two-time all-conference selections. Thursday’s win gave SMU its 25th regular-season win of the year, a program record. It also marked the third straight year of at least 25 wins, an achievement never reached before their arrival. In each of their three years, SMU has surpassed the 100,000 total attendance mark, a feat only accomplished once prior in school history.
“It’s been an incredible kind of ride. To think of what (the seniors) have done and what they’ve established: the expectations, the level of play,” Brown said. “It’s been more than Tim and I could ever have imagined. You only hope for something like this.”
Moore and Kennedy, and later Tolbert, leave behind a culture of winning that hinges on support for teammates and playing for teammates. That mindset has helped them succeed despite not playing with the postseason in mind. It’s a mindset that’s contagious and spreads to fans. Thursday was merely proof.
“Getting into it, making it hard for the other team to hear their plays, just being here for us day in and day out, I have to say thank you to them,” Moore said.
