UConn Women's Basketball Team Remembers A Friend Who Was Quick With A Smile

STORRS - On a normal Monday, Tina Charles, UConn's senior center, would walk into her 9 a.m. sociology class, look over her shoulder and see her friend, Jasper Howard, the UConn football player.

Then later in the day, she would look up to the Gampel Pavilion concourse and see Howard, smiling and waving — Jasper being Jasper.

But not this Monday.

"I developed such a good relationship with him," Charles said. "He used to tell me that all he wanted to do was to be able to help his family out back home. He had such a bright future. It's so tough to consider how tough an environment he came from, and you're in college trying to do the right thing, and all of a sudden this happens.

"He sat right next to me in class, which was canceled [Monday]. But it will be hard on Wednesday and Friday, and the rest of the semester to not be able to look over my shoulder and see him there."

Howard died of stab wounds early Sunday morning outside a UConn-sponsored function on campus. Many of the women's basketball players who had befriended him, who tried to defend him during carefree summer pickup games, who goofed around with him at various apartments and functions, were devastated.

Their eyes were red and watery Sunday, making it impossible to practice. So coach Geno Auriemma told them they didn't need to. And although work resumed Monday, things did not seem to be that much different.

"Today, as practice started, I broke down because I saw a football player walking around Gampel," Charles said. "I'm so used to seeing Jasper walking through, smiling and waving. In the summer, he'd come over to the gym and shoot [hoops] with us. He was always smiling. That smile would get any girl.

"It got me. Yes ... it did."

Howard's infectious personality won him many friends in the women's program. Although he seemed to be shy and quiet, he also was able to say the right thing at the right time to crack the room up. "I knew him pretty well. ... pretty well. ... He was a very good friend," said Kalana Greene, still fighting back the tears. "We'd hang out all the time. I just saw him Thursday. I'd see him once or twice a week.

"I'd see him everywhere and it's hard to believe I'll never see him again. He seemed shy, quiet. But he was the funniest guy you could meet."

And he was just as accomplished on the basketball court as he was in the secondary of UConn's defense.

"He was everything you'd want to find in a person," Lorin Dixon said. "[Sunday] was hard for us. We all took it hard, we all knew him on different levels. But we'll keep him in our hearts forever and it did have an impact on us — how we see each other and the world.

"I'll remember how Jazz used to take me [on the dribble]. One of the fastest people I'd ever met in my life. He had me. I'm not going to lie."

Howard's death apparently comes as a lesson as valuable as any a college athlete can learn.

"Sad part is, this isn't the big city, a place where you could say this kind of thing happens a lot," Auriemma said. "This is Storrs. This is supposed to be different than everywhere else. It's not supposed to happen here. But this reminds you that we're not any different than anyplace else."