The Morning After

[SWC75]

Usually I dread the morning after a disappointing defeat. I'm having a pleasant dream, then reality comes back into focus and...

But in this case, I'd been dreaming that we wound up in the NIT. I woke and realized that wasn't going to happen and I felt better.

Back in the day, South Carolina was an ACC team coached by Frank McGuire, was in the ACC. In 1970, The Gamcocks were 25-2 and ranked #3 in the country. They'd gone unbeaten in the ACC, (14-0), but lost in the finals of the ACC tournament to NC State, which used a slow-down to win 42-39 in overtime. In those days there were only 24 teams in the NCAA tournament and only conference champions and independents, (of which there were about 60), got invitations to the Big Dance. The ACC was the only conference with a tournament at that time and that determined their champion. So South Carolina, 25-3 and ranked #6 after their loss, wasn't invited. They could have gone to the NIT but were so disheartened by what happened they voted to stay home.

That won't happen to us. Maybe these are "the good old days".

 

[85SUAlum]

Reminds me a bit of my freshman year and the 80-81 season when we won the Big East tourney and had a 22-12 record but didn't get an automatic NCAA bid because it was only the 2nd year of the conference, and no at-large bid because the NCAAs were only 48 teams that year. Felt like quite a snub by the NCAA tourney committee.
We ended up going to the NITs and losing in the final 86-84.