LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Just last month, UAB had suffered bad back-to-back losses and no longer held a winning record, one of the lowest moments of a mediocre season soon to be surely washed from memory.
Some of the players on the inexperienced team, the third-youngest in the nation, believed its hopes of an NCAA Tournament appearance were long gone.
“Four or five guys on our team didn’t realize a month ago that the Conference USA tournament champions got an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament,” coach Jerod Haase said.
After earning the bid to the Big Dance with an unlikely conference tournament championship run, the 14th-seeded Blazers busted millions of brackets and ignited the insanity of the first full day of action after pulling a shocking second round upset in the South Region over No. 3 Iowa State, 60-59, on Thursday.
Winning their first tournament game in 10 years, the Blazers (20-15) — who were later joined in victory by 14th-seeded Georgia State — are one of 20 14-seeds to ever defeat a 3-seed and one of four teams to do so in the past three years.
After knocking off the Big 12 Tournament champions, UAB — Conference USA’s fourth-place team — will play No. 11 UCLA in the third round on Saturday.
“We want another moment like that now,” Haase said. “Our thoughts have been, when we play well, we think we can compete with anybody, and those thoughts have been expressed to our team, and our team has made the choice to believe in that. I think that’s what you saw.”