‘It Was Nothing More Than a Dream’: New Canaan’s Gus Larson Plays in NCAA March Madness Tourney

Gus Larson already had several years of competitive basketball under his belt—starting in the New Canaan youth league as a West School fourth-grader and playing through his sophomore year at New Canaan High School—before he even dreamed of playing Division 1 hoops.

It was at NCHS, Larson recalled last Thursday afternoon, that he “started to take basketball really seriously and realized that I had the potential to do something with basketball.”

“I started to grow quite tall,” Larson, who wrapped up his collegiate career as a 6’10” center for Queens University of Charlotte the week before, told NewCanaanite.com. “I loved to play, I loved to be in the gym, and [NCHS coach] Danny Melzer was kind enough to let me use the shooting gun during some of my lunch breaks at New Canaan High School. And so at that time you start to take it seriously. But I never really dreamed of playing Division 1 basketball at that point, much less the March Madness tournament. It was nothing more than a dream, really.”

That dream became a reality after the Queens Royals won their first-ever NCAA tournament berth by clinching the Atlantic Sun Conference title with an overtime win over the University of Central Arkansas — an unforgettable experience for Larson and fitting bookend to a standout basketball career that started in New Canaan.

‘Gus was a gym rat’

Larson played basketball at NCHS through his sophomore year, including on the varsity team, before attending Northfield Mount Hermon in Gill, Mass.

Melzer, who would go on to coach Larson’s class to New Canaan’s first state title in nearly 40 years, remembered the teen as a tough competitor with a strong work ethic.

“Gus was a gym rat while he was here, constantly working on his game,” Melzer said. “When he left after his sophomore year, he was 6’4. What always stood out to me was his willingness to do the dirty work—take charges, dive on the floor, rebound——even though he was very skinny. He was never afraid to mix it up. His dream was to play college basketball and we’re proud of him for achieving that and loved watching him play in the NCAA Tournament.”

After Northfield Mount Hermon, Larson went to the University of Pennsylvania to study business at Wharton. After two years of limited playing time and a sidelining back injury at Penn, Larson transferred to the University of California-Berkeley, where he played basketball while earning a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary studies, combining business and sociology with a passion for art, and then finally to Queens for a three-semester graduate program in global business management. 

Larson’s dream of playing Division 1 basketball was already taking shape at Northfield Mount Hermon, “but it’s all a dream until one day a coach calls you and you get that first offer,” he recalled.

When that call came from Penn, Larson recalled, “It’s like, ‘Oh man I’m going to do that, I have an option.’ ” 

“A similar thing happened with the tournament run,” he said. “I have always wanted to win, like any athlete, to prove I’m the best and do it with swagger and win games. But I always wanted to do it the right way. At Penn, I think we were able to do the right way, win games the right way, but there was not enough talent for a championship run. It was similar at Cal, we would bump up and then the competition gets that much harder and you need that much more talent to make a championship run, but you keep working through all of it and getting better. I was becoming stronger and lifting, then I came here to Queens.”

At Queens, Larson said, he underwent a grueling bootcamp of early morning running, pushups and jump-rope that amounted to a mental test as much as a physical challenge. 

It culminated in what he recalled as “one shining moment.”

“At the end of bootcamp, although it was corny at the time, we set up ladders and cut down the nets, and that was when winning the [conference] tournament really became a reality to me,” he recalled. “It had been excruciatingly hard work, every day was harder than the one before, and then finally you cut down the net. I tied my piece to my locker and every day at practice I saw that little piece of net.”

Though Queens got knocked around in its non-conference schedule, playing the likes of Auburn and UVA, the hard work started to pay off in conference games, leading to a dramatic final versus Central Arkansas. There, Larson recalled, Queens squandered a late lead and was forced into an overtime with no momentum.

“That moment, for me, was when I came to the realization that basketball was coming to a close, so I was trying to soak up as much of the moment as I could. I had written before that game in my journal, just kind of reflecting on what basketball had meant to me. At its core, basketball is a game you have fun playing as a kid. That was the biggest lesson I learned these last few gates, was a reminder to just play.”

When the final buzzer sounded, Larson thought about what the moment meant to him “and it was that I get to play one more game, I get one more experience with this basketball thing.”

‘It felt really special’

Queens faced No. 2-seeded Purdue University in the West Region First Round, a game that took place in the Enterprise Center, home of the NHL’s St. Louis Blues.

“As a basketball player, I’ve been fortunate to play at all sorts of levels,” Larson said. “So in the first place, the venue itself seats thousands of people. They made the court special just for that event, and the seats are padded—not like bench seats. Everybody has the best seats in the house, and behind the hoop the fans go on for miles.”

Even on that stage, Larson was able to stay centered and focused on “another basketball game.”

“It was another chance to go out there and play,” he said. “And it almost felt like I was right at home where I was just playing against high major teams back when I was at Cal, or the nonconference season at Penn. I was playing against the same guys I’d seen before or on TV and it felt familiar to do exactly what I have been doing the last 20 years of my life—really the last 10 years, taking basketball seriously.”

His mom, Kristina Larson, had a front-row seat through those decades. She said that the town, including Gus’s Saxe Middle School friends and the youth program here—made for an “awesome foundation” to excel.

For Kristina Larson, one favorite part of watching her son’s journey from West School to St. Louis “was being the driver” through all of it.

“It was truly a pleasure to spend so many years on the road with Gus, driving from New Jersey to Boston and all over the place for games and tournaments in high school then traveling to college games.” she said. “Some of my favorite memories are those car rides, a car full of boys talking, doing homework—they always had to finish their homework—and laughing.”

On the court, Kristina Larson said, she watched her son grow into a strong athlete thanks in part to New Canaan people, including the later Peter McAleer, who “believed in Gus so much and really saw the potential in him.”

“I thought of him a lot over the years,” she said.

In 12 minutes during the March 20 Queens NC vs. Purdue game, Gus Larson scored six points on 3-for-4 shooting and also pulled down three rebounds, though Kristina Larson’s favorite moment happened even before tipoff. 

“While the team was warming up, Gus quietly stepped away and slowly walked around the arena, taking in the whole scene,” she recalled. “You could see him just absorbing the moment. Then he went right back to his teammates and started practicing like it was any other game. He played so hard. And like all games I could see him on or off the bench helping his teammates. That’s always been most important to him. He calms them down, picks them up and cheers them on.”

She noted also that her son was the last one to leave the floor after Queens fell to Purdue, signing T-shirts for kids.

“For me, that captured everything about Gus—gratitude, humility, and joy,” she said.

In the 22,000-seat arena, Larson said, “It felt really special to still look up in the stands and see people wearing Queens gear and to see my family standing up and clapping.”

“I remember it was midway through the first half when I got a little dunk—I got a drop-off pass and dunked it,” he recalled. “And the only thought that went through my head was, ‘I just dunked in March Madness.’ I was just out there having fun.”