Former UConn basketball coach Dom Perno is back on the sidelines, now watching his granddaughter play for Sheehan High

Sixty years ago Wednesday, on March 13, 1964, Dom Perno stole the ball from Bill Bradley and became an iconic part of Connecticut sports history.

“A lot has happened in those 60 years,” Dom’s wife Cindy said Tuesday.

Perno, who played for UConn from 1960-64, would go on to coach the Huskies, helping to usher in the Big East era. He and Cindy moved to Washington, D.C., in the late ’90s so he could work in athletic administration at George Washington, then they went to North Carolina upon retirement.

But now the Pernos are back in Connecticut and Dom, 82, can be found courtside at Sheehan High girls basketball games, where his granddaughter Bella is a senior guard.

Bella, who comes off the bench, had a 3-pointer in Sheehan’s 64-43 win over Berlin in the Class MM semifinal game Saturday night at Plainville High. After the game, she went over to hug her grandfather. Sheehan was headed to the state championship game this weekend at Mohegan Sun Arena for the first time since 2019 and for the fourth time in school history.

“She said, ‘I’m so excited,’ and we were too,’” Cindy said. “It’s so thrilling.”

Bella wears No. 15, like her grandfather did at Wilbur Cross, where his teams won 49 straight games and the 1958 New England championship, and at UConn, where his steal in the 1964 NCAA tournament second-round game against Princeton propelled the Huskies into rarified air, a 52-50 win over the favored Tigers and a spot in the NCAA tournament regional finals against Duke at Reynolds Coliseum in North Carolina. UConn had previously only won one NCAA Tournament game before the Huskies beat Temple in the first round of the ’64 tournament.

With the score tied at 50, Perno hit two free throws. With less than 20 seconds left, Bradley – an All-American who averaged over 30 points a game – had the ball and a UConn defender on him. Perno ran up behind him and took it and dribbled out the clock for the win. The Huskies would lose to Duke the next game.

Dom still remembers that day: “Sure do,” he said Tuesday. “Sixty years. Wow.”

Bella remembered seeing a photo of her grandfather and Bill Bradley when she was in elementary school, back when she started playing basketball. Her father, also named…