In this year’s Nashville SEC tourney, the top three seeds got sent home in their tournament opener: VOLS, Cats, and bammer.
It marked the first time the SEC’s top three seeds all lost their tournament openers since
1983. That tournament was played in Birmingham, Alabama, and Georgia won the tournament.
With that wind in their sails, UGA would then make a run
all the way to the Final Four.
Same prevailing tourney victor’s winds that sailed Bruce Pearl’s ship of fortune in 2019, past Blue Blood murderer’s row to the Final Four.
And 1983 was of course THE March Madness that treated us to arguably the most iconic buzzer beater championship win of all, N.C. State over Houston. David over the Goliath, Akeem Olajuwon. Jimmy V running like a wild eyed schizophrenic over the court after the improbable buzzer-beating dunk by Lorenzo Charles off a short desperation shot from 30 feet out by Derek Wittenburg.
The
Cardiac Pack, they were.
Both Charles's dunk and Valvano's running around the court in celebration immediately after the game have been staples of NCAA tournament production ever since. N. C. State's victory has often been considered one of the greatest upsets in college basketball history, and is the
fourth biggest point-spread upset in Championship Game history.
The Wolfpack would later have to find a way to beat Virginia, with big Ralph Sampson, to advance.
If you like parallels (to AU 2019), N. C. State was DOWN 5 with 20 seconds left in round one to Pepperdine! They had to pull the miracle to set up the magical national championship. The same "could" befall Auburn this tournament, we shall see. They gotta be ready, and seem like they have the kind of team character that WILL.
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