There’s more than spring football to talk about in the state of Alabama this week.
Roundball fever has hit the deep South with both the University of Alabama and Alabama-Birmingham in the Sweet 16.
UAB, 22-9 and a No. 9 seed in the St. Louis Regional, knocked off No. 1-seeded Kentucky on Sunday in a second-round NCAA Tournament contest while, Alabama, 19-13 and a No. 8 seed in the Phoenix Regional, defeated No. 1 Stanford, 70-67, on Saturday.
“This is Cinderella,” UAB assistant coach Scott Edgar said. “The kids don’t understand this now. But as time goes by, they’ll realize the magnitude.”
So will the football-mad fans in the state.
Alabama is in the Sweet 16 for the eighth time, but the first time since 1991. The Crimson Tide will play Syracuse on Thursday night in Phoenix. UAB is in the Sweet 16 for the third time, the first since 1982. The Blazers will meet Kansas University at 6:10 p.m. Friday at the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis.
It’s the first time since 1986 that two teams from Alabama have reached the Sweet 16 the same season. Auburn and Alabama advanced that year.
No team from Alabama has played in a Final Four.
UAB, a team that likes to run, press and use up to 13 players, would like to be the first.
“Our goal is to win the national championship,” UAB coach Mike Anderson said, comparing the Blazers’ win over Kentucky to “David’s over Goliath.”
“It takes six wins. We’ve won two.”
This happens to be the 25th anniversary of UAB basketball. It’s also the season in which the Blazers notched the program’s 500th win.
“All these milestones. It just feels like a dream,” UAB assistant Chris Giles told the Birmingham News.
Giles dreamt of a possible meeting in the national title game against Alabama, a team on the other side of the bracket.
“Wouldn’t that be tremendous?” Giles told the News. “You just never know.”
Guard Mo Finley, who hit the shot to beat Kentucky, says the Blazers’ work is not finished.
“We’d like to keep winning,” Finley said. “The next game we win may be bigger than this one.”
No matter what happens the rest of the way, the Blazers definitely have made a mark.
“These guys have paid a price. I told them they could have a very special year at the beginning of the year. To be sitting here getting ready to go to the Sweet 16, my hat’s off to all our players and staff,” Anderson said.
¢
Self vs. Anderson: KU coach Bill Self remembers playing against second-year UAB coach Anderson in college.
It was when Self was a freshman at Oklahoma State and Anderson a senior at Tulsa.
“They won,” Self said. “He was part of a great team that went 27-4 at Tulsa. Mike was a real good player.
“I can’t remember,” Self added, asked if he guarded Anderson. “I wasn’t very good as a freshman. If I guarded him, I didn’t do it well.”
