New London - It was right around Memorial Day, 2010, when Trip Fernandes, proud senior at Coast Guard Academy, was in the less familiar environment of the UConn campus. Truth be told, Fernandes would have preferred to remain at the military hamlet by the Thames, except that his first foray at Coast Guard didn't go so well. Fernandes left in February, 2010, "because I needed to become more mature."

And so he enrolled at State U and was on the Storrs campus for summer school. Fernandes, once and always a basketball player, a member of the Bears' Elite Eight team in 2008, had the urge to shoot some hoops. So he asked about the gym's location, only to find a locked fieldhouse.

"Bummer," Fernandes recalls thinking at the time.

Soon, though, he ran into "kids who looked like they were basketball players," he said. Good reason for that. They were Shabazz Napier and Michael Bradley, off to Gampel Pavilion for a pickup game.

"Can I come too?" Fernandes said, almost a scene out of a movie. "After a while, they said to me, 'are you going to keep following us?'"

Apparently, though, they teach persistence at Coast Guard, right there with the yes-sirs and no-ma'ams. Fernandes kept following Napier and Bradley. And what happened next catalyzed memories of a lifetime.

"I walked into Gampel and I'm thinking, 'Oh my God, this is it,'" Fernandes said. "There I am with my Coast Guard practice jersey from the Pete Barry era. It turned out they only had nine players for the pickup game. So I say, 'Do you need a 10th?'"

It helped that Fernandes looks like a basketball player, tall and thin, shaped a little like 6 o'clock. Fernandes became the 10th for the pickup game.

"I'm playing on the wing because, what, I'm going in there and guard Alex Oriakhi?" Fernandes said. "I'm out on the wing, I get a pass and make a 3 and I can see there's this 'who is this kid?' thing going on. It was great."

It got better.

The score was tied when Fernandes authored what he called his "signature moment."

"I got the ball and I made a move around Ater Majok and made the shot. Game over," he said. It wasn't long until he met the team managers and other necessary personnel within the program.

Suddenly, there was an answer to "Who is this kid?"

Trip Fernandes, the newest practice player for the UConn Huskies.

And from last October through December, Fernandes was there every day with Jim Calhoun, Kemba Walker and Jeremy Lamb.

"It was really cool," Fernandes said. "Kemba knew my name."

Fernandes was told that if he hung around for the year, he'd be able to travel with the team this season. Meantime, he was part of the scout team that prepared the Huskies for each game.

"Four hours a day minimum," he said. "It was a lot, what with my major (biomedical engineering)."

When UConn's opponent had a good shooter, assistant coach George Blaney would give Fernandes a different color jersey and say, "keep shooting."

Fernandes chose to return to Coast Guard for the second semester of last year. Not everyone, you figure, would give up the chance of a lifetime, especially knowing that a degree in biomedical engineering from UConn wouldn't exactly render you as a ditch digger.

"I came back because of the Coast Guard family and everything I was taught here the first time around," he said. "I took a lot of that to UConn with me."

He even used it. He remembered rebounding for Lamb one day last year when he figured, well, you only live once.

"He seemed hesitant," Fernandes said. "I told him, 'you have more talent than I ever will. But I have more college experience than you. Don't worry about what the coach is saying. Just play your game.' I'd like to think he took it to heart."

Fernandes said he loved his experiences with Calhoun, whose "animation gets his players going." He may have even seen some of that in his own coach Saturday when Kevin Jaskiewicz at Coast Guard sparred with the game officials and even drew a technical. The Bears then rallied from a 22-point deficit and almost won.

Fernandes will graduate from Coast Guard in May with a degree in Marine Environmental Sciences. He will have been part of the greatest basketball team in the history of the place. And because of a peculiar twist, he was part of the most improbable run in UConn history, too.

Who is this kid? He's the one with a one hell of a story to tell.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro.