Danny Melzer

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

By |

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.