By Keiko Talley
MS Journalism ’16
BU College of Communication

On November 16, Boston University Men’s Basketball team competed in the Coaches vs. Cancer triple-header at the TD Garden. UMASS, Holy Cross, Boston College, Northeastern and Harvard University all participated in the two-day tournament, which marked the start to the BU Men’s Basketball season.

A week ago, I wrote a post explaining the significance of this event (check it out here). Each participating school chose one representative to raise at least $1,500 for the American Cancer Society (ACS). With great success, each school reached their goal days before the tournament even took place.

BU chose College of Communication student Connor Lenahan to be the school’s representative and spearhead all fundraising (if you didn’t get a chance to read about Connor’s story in my last post, make sure you check it out here).

Although BU lost their game to Northeastern, players and fans still felt like winners, especially Connor. ACS donations were collected right up until the start of the first game at 1 p.m. on Sunday. During the second game’s halftime, the two schools who raised the most money were announced—Harvard University and Boston University. BU came in first raising a total of $1,835 and Harvard second with a total of $1,830.

As the winner of the ACS fundraising competition, Connor was invited to center court to live out a lifelong dream of playing basketball on an NBA court, despite his disability. Connor participated in a shootout against a Harvard professor and superfan.

Although he did not win the shootout, Connor was still excited that he played basketball on the same court that Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen have played on… something he will forever be able to brag to his friends about. But above all, Connor felt humbled to have been blessed with the opportunity to give back to such a great cause like the American Cancer Society—something he hopes to continue with in the future.