TOMORROW IN FAIRFAX, GEORGE MASON WILL HONOR ITS PAST WHILE STARING STRAIGHT INTO ITS FUTURE
Inside EagleBank Arena, the 2006 Final Four team will be back home. Jim Larrañaga will see his banner go into the rafters. Old Dominion will be on the other bench, like old times. And the guy who once wore No. 1 for that team, Tony Skinn, will be standing in front of the home bench as the head coach, leading a 9–1 Patriot squad that suddenly feels a lot like the one that shocked the world.
Two decades later, Skinn is still living his dream. And he’s in charge of making sure everybody else gets to dream a little too.
Back When We Were Just Kids In The Stands
I was a senior at George Mason in 2006 and I basically lived in the old Patriot Center.
I am not exaggerating. I did not miss a single home game. My class schedule, my social life, everything got built around Mason basketball. You could feel something brewing with that group. It was not hype, it was not marketing. It was in the way they guarded, the way they moved the ball, the way teams walked out of our building looking like they had just been in a fight.
One night still plays in my head like a highlight loop. BracketBuster game. ESPN.
I was at Front Page in Arlington. The place was jammed with Mason students, packed shoulder to shoulder, all of us locked on one TV. Tony Skinn pulled up, hit that three, and the bar just detonated. Tables shook, beer went flying, people were yelling in each other’s faces and hugging people they did not know.
It did not feel like “history” yet. It felt like something simpler:
Yeah, these dudes are for real.
We had no clue how far it was about to go.
Richmond Gut Punch
When the CAA Tournament rolled around, I drove down to Richmond convinced we were just there to finish the job. Get the automatic bid, cut the nets, cruise back up 95 on top of the world.
Instead, Hofstra sent us home early.
Walking out of that building, it felt like someone had shut off the lights on the season. The talk turned straight to “maybe the NIT,” and even that felt like a stretch. The car ride back was quiet. A lot of staring out windows. A lot of “how did we blow that.”
Then life did what it does. It moved on, at least for a minute.
I got on a plane to Mexico for spring break with my fraternity brothers, figuring the season was basically done except for arguing about the selection committee.
Two Words From my Mom, You’re In
This was 2006. Flip phones, no Twitter, no ESPN app, no twelve screens. CBS owned March. If your name did not show up on their bracket, you did not exist.
At one point on that trip, I was standing on the roof of the house we were staying in, phone to my ear, talking to my mom back home. She said five words that flipped everything:
“You’re in. Mason got in.”
I did not believe her. After the Hofstra loss, after all the talk about mid majors and strength of schedule and “quality wins,” it sounded like wishful thinking.
Then it sank in. George Mason was in the NCAA Tournament.
In about five seconds the mood went from sulking to scheming.
Alright, what bar in Mexico is going to have the game on Thursday. Who is changing their plans. Who is parking in front of a TV and not moving.
The season was back from the dead.
Michigan State by Ticker, UNC by Airport TV
Here is the part that still stings. After living in that arena all year, I was not in Dayton.
When Mason played Michigan State, we were in a bar in Mexico trying to follow along off whatever CBS would give us. There were no four channels of wall to wall games, no live stats in your pocket. We had the bottom line ticker and the occasional cut in. That was it.
Every time the score crawled and Mason was still ahead, the place got louder. When it finally became clear that we had actually knocked off Tom Izzo and Michigan State, the bar erupted. You would have thought the game was being played in the parking lot.
It felt massive and still weirdly far away. I remember thinking, very clearly, I should be there.
Then came North Carolina.
The defending national champs, the blueblood jersey everybody grows up watching in March.
We were flying back east while Mason played UNC. No Wi Fi, no live updates, just a plane full of people in green and gold pretending to read, pretending to sleep, really just hoping.
When we landed in Atlanta and walked into the terminal, the answer was already everywhere. Every TV in the concourse had the same image. George Mason over North Carolina.
People looked from the screens to our Mason shirts and back again. Our flip phones started buzzing with texts and voicemails from friends who had just watched the whole thing unfold.
Michigan State was the “can you believe this” game.
North Carolina was the “this cannot be real” game.
I missed both in person. That was it. No more watching history from the outside.
In the Building When the Sport Tilted
We made sure we were in the building for the Sweet 16 and the Elite Eight at the Verizon Center.
First up was Wichita State. That win felt like proof. Mason was not a fluke. Mason belonged. The guys in green and gold were not looking up at anybody.
Then came UConn.
That roster was loaded. Pros everywhere. The bracket, the pundits, the expectations, all pointed one way. This was supposed to be the part where the nice little story ended and the favorite moved on.
Instead, Mason punched right back. Possession after possession. Big shots. Big stops. You could feel the entire building leaning, then tipping.
When the horn went off and it was over, Mason 86, UConn 84, the arena did not just cheer. It shook. People were screaming, crying, hugging strangers.
It felt like college basketball had just shifted a couple inches to the side.
Tornado Sirens and Indy
We were never going to watch the Final Four from a couch. We packed a car and drove to Indianapolis.
All the way through the Midwest, tornado sirens kept going off. I am not exaggerating. It was this weird, low, constant soundtrack behind the trip. It almost felt like the world knew something insane was happening.
At one point somebody said, if this is the end of the world, there is no better place to be than at the Final Four watching the Patriots.
We laughed. Nobody argued.
Mason did not win the national title. The trophy went somewhere else. But the program came away with something you cannot lose in a box score. A spot in the sport’s memory. An identity. A belief that never really left Fairfax.
The Kid in No. 1 Funs the Show Now
Fast forward twenty years. The guy wearing No. 1 back then is now the one with the clipboard.
In 2006, Tony Skinn was the edge. Picking up 94 feet, hitting threes that broke teams’ backs, talking like Mason belonged with anybody in the country and then proving it.
Now he is the head coach. Tony Skinn is still living his dream.
Since taking over in 2023, Skinn has pushed Mason right back into relevance. Fifty six wins, an Atlantic 10 regular season title, a 9–1 start this season, a profile that says this is not just a feel good reunion tour. This is a team that expects to be taken seriously.
Two starters from that Final Four team are still in the middle of it. Skinn running the sideline. Lamar Butler, the East Region hero, now Director of Player Development, passing on the same big game DNA to the next group. Jim Larrañaga, the coach who steered the whole thing in 2006, is coming back this weekend to watch his banner go into the rafters.
Back then, CBS said the dream was alive at George Mason. That line stuck. It still fits.
And if you are into signs, this year’s bracket is handing you a few. The 2026 Final Four is back in Indianapolis. The regional is in downtown D.C. The same cities where this all went crazy the first time are sitting right back on the road.
They Were not Born. We are still here.
Saturday, Mason plays Old Dominion at EagleBank Arena and marks twenty years since that run. Old Dominion is the perfect foil, an old CAA rival, a reminder of where this all started.
Freshmen on this year’s roster were not even born when Mason ran through Michigan State, North Carolina, Wichita State and UConn. For them, 2006 is video clips and stories.
For us, it is still right there.
For me, it is all the way around the circle. I was the kid who never missed a home game. The guy at Front Page Arlington losing his mind when Tony Skinn buried that BracketBuster three. The one standing on a roof in Mexico as my mom told me Mason had made the tournament. Now I am standing in the same town, watching that same No. 1 write the next chapter.
The arena has a new name. The tech is different. The kids wearing the jerseys were not alive when this started.
But when the lights drop, when the 2006 team walks out, when Larrañaga’s banner goes up and Tony Skinn huddles his players and sends them onto that floor, that building is going to feel a whole lot like it did back then.
The dream did not end in 2006. It just took a twenty year lap.
And on Saturday in Fairfax, with tip off at 12:30 p.m. at EagleBank Arena and national television coverage on USA Network, it is still very much alive.
“Man, alone, has the power to transform his thoughts into physical reality; man, alone, can dream and make his dreams come true.” — Napoleon Hill
