'Go Stan Greene!' Ex-Penn captain recalls cheer

· Stan Greene: I guess the most notable memory is experiencing the "Go Stan Greene!" cheer. I can remember the night when it originated. It was my sophomore year and we were playing in the Pennsylvania Classic. It was a tournament consisting of four Pennsylvania teams -- Penn State, Duquesne, Pitt and, of course, Pennsylvania. And we played Duquesne in the first game and I guarded Norm Nixon, who ultimately became a really good pro ball player for the Los Angeles Lakers. He was very good, very quick -- all week long, Chuck Daly, who was our coach at the time, would say to me, "All right," and we'd be watching film, "that's your guy." So, I was gearing up for him. My forte was defense. I would always try to stop their best player and so I guarded him and actually fouled him out of the game.? For two years I was the sixth man -- my sophomore and junior years -- so I would come off the bench and try to spark the team defensively and then score some quick buckets. I can recall that game, this cheer came out of nowhere. It started with a drumroll, duh-duh-duh-dih-duh-duh-duh, Go Stan Greene! And I'm going, 'What is this?' And then from that point on, it was basketball games, it was football games, when the school had hockey. In fact, I just bumped into somebody at a basketball club function Thursday night and this guy had graduated in '79 and just had his class reunion in May. He said, "Hey, do you know what? At our class reunion, guys broke into the "Go Stan Greene!" cheer as they were reflecting on some of the memorable moments in '79 that they remembered. And actually my class was '78, so I thought that that was really interesting. No matter what happens, a year doesn't go by without someone bringing that up and recalling the fun times -- that cheer seemed to be kind of a focal point for those times in the late '70s and even into the early '80s as it continued. My favorite memory was the time that it originated and then all through my career people used that as not just something for me but as kind of a rallying cry for Penn sports. So it's something that I'll never forget. [It's] also [a favorite] because it just became part of the Palestra and part of what Penn was all about, and just part of the excitement of going to a Penn game and being excited for myself. I just felt good that we continued things like that and I felt honored that I was an integral part of Penn athletic events through that cheer. You can't describe it. It was funny because I remembered thinking as I was playing and hearing that chant, "You know, it would be funny if one day I'm on a cane and walking around and they're still doing the cheer." Well, it turns out they don't do [the cheer] anymore, but it continued for probably another five or six years after I graduated.