“Anytime night or day / Get your game on, we can play / Two-on-two, a one-on-one / A full-on-five let’s get it done / Show me your juke and jive / (Come on, show me) keep that ball alive / When March comes callin’ ya know what that means / Lady Cats be ballin’ in the sweet 16.” — “I Love Basketball” by Connie Brannock.
If she hadn’t been seduced by rock and roll as a teen, Tucson R&B, neo-soul singer-songwriter Connie Brannock might have taken her love of basketball beyond high school hoops.
“I have been in love with basketball since I was probably about 11 and used to play in the sandlots,” Brannock recalled.
She played high school ball in her native Cambridge, Maryland, and “if I hadn’t been so enamored with rock ’n’ roll I probably would have played in college.” And while the former point guard put her basketball ambitions on the back burner, she never lost her love of the game.
She especially loves the University of Arizona women’s team under coach Adia Barnes. So much so that she wrote them a theme song of sorts, an homage to the game and the team’s rise to become one of the best programs in the Pac-12 and all of women’s college basketball.
“They are amazing. I am so excited they are going to be on ESPN” when they face No. 8 Oregon on Jan. 14, said the 65-year-old, who has been a fixture in Tucson’s music scene since 2009, performing with several bands including her Little House of Funk R&B band. “And I love the fact that they are getting so much coverage. I pull up EPSN and they are there. We are just in the boom. Women’s sports in general are getting a lot more attention and I am so happy about that.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of someone writing a song about a basketball team let alone a woman’s basketball team,” UA senior forward Sam Thomas said on the eve of the No. 6 Wildcats matchup against No. 1 Stanford on Friday, Jan. 1. “I’m really excited to hear it. Maybe we’ll download it and listen for our pregame warmup.”
“I think that’s amazing, to give our team recognition,” added senior guard and WNBA hopeful Aari McDonald. “I just can’t wait to hear it. I wish I was on the hook, but we’ll talk about that later.”
Brannock, who coached coed basketball while teaching at Presidio School several years ago, wrote “I Love Basketball” as a poem and turned it into a song during her COVID-19 lockdown last summer. The song was finished right around the time that legendary UA men’s basketball coach Lute Olson died in late August, so Tyrone Williams, a Tucson minister who raps on the song, added a shout-out to Olson: “But it was Lute y’all / That put us on the map / Now it’s the Lady Cats / That’s where it’s at.”
“I think it’s awesome. For someone to take the time and care to (write a song), I’m just thankful. I can’t wait to hear it,” Barnes said. “I think it’s cool and I think the players will think it’s cool.”
In addition to Williams, Brannock teamed up with Tucson producer Chris Peña and her Little House of Funk saxophonist Gary Love, who plays on the song. The trio recorded the album in separate sessions to maintain COVID-19 pandemic social distancing protocols and Peña put the tracks together.
“It was a project that we were able to complete in isolation but it came together,” said Brannock, who moved to Tucson in 2008 after retiring from a 22-year military career.
Barnes said she might just blast “I Love Basketball” in the McKale Center during the team’s warmups.
“We can blast it now because people can’t complain about how loud it is,” she joked.
“For us, as a women’s program, to have a song written about us says a lot about how much Tucson loves our team,” Barnes added. “And I love that because we love Tucson.”
