NCAA Basketball: UNC-Asheville storms from behind to secure Big South title

Despite being the 1 seed in the Big South Tournament, UNC-Asheville was down for most of the title game with Campbell. But the Bulldogs found a way to succeed.

The famous breweries lining the streets of The Land of the Sky may be a bit busier than usual this evening.

They took the scenic route, but the UNC Asheville Bulldogs are headed to the Big Dance for the first time since 2016 following a thrilling 77-73 victory over Campbell Sunday afternoon.

The fact that the Bulldogs won the conference tournament hardly comes as a surprise. Asheville was the cream of the crop in the Big South from start to finish this season, and they left for Charlotte last week as heavy favorites to cut down the nets and go dancing. Because of their status as favorites, it would be easy to scoff at Asheville’s run as an unsurprising one that was business as usual.

However, embracing a “ho-hum” approach to Asheville’s run severely underrates how difficult it is to win conference tournaments at the mid-major level. After going 16-2 in Big South play, the Bulldogs went to Charlotte with a metaphorical target on their backs. Their conference peers prepared for the tournament with the understanding that that ticket to Cinderella’s dance was firmly up for grabs if an upset of Asheville could be achieved.

And make no mistake about it, UNC Asheville’s path to punching its ticket to the NCAA Tournament was anything but a walk in the park.

The Bulldogs got all they could handle from the South Carolina Upstate Spartans Saturday. After trailing 32-30 at the break, star forward Drew Pember scored 31 points and carried the Bulldogs to a narrow 66-62 victory. Saturday’s victory sent the Bulldogs to the Big South final, where they met a Campbell squad they swept in the regular season. There’s a prevailing idea in sports that it is difficult to beat the same team three times in the same season, and for a while, it looked like the Camels were going to provide validation to this phenomenon.

The Camels led for almost the entirety of the game, and for a while, it even seemed like it might be a relatively easy victory for Campbell. With fewer than 7:30 left on the clock, the Camels opened up a commanding 66-52 lead and were agonizingly close to their first trip to the Big Dance since the first Bush administration.

While it took longer than Mike Morrell would have liked, the Bulldogs finally woke up and remembered who they are. Asheville stars Drew Pember and Tajion Jones turned in heroic performances to engineer the courageous comeback. With 59 seconds remaining, Jones nailed a three-point attempt to give Asheville its first lead since the score was 13-11.

Jones finished with 24 points and hit 5-9 attempts from deep, he also contributed 8 rebounds and finished with 3 steals. Pember was the engine that made the Bulldogs go all season, and he was immense again when the team needed him the most. The Tennessee transfer added 29 points and 8 rebounds and was rightfully named the tournament MVP for his efforts.

As the Bulldogs await their fate on Selection Sunday, they’ll be hoping their name will be read off as a 15 seed instead of a 16. This will be Asheville’s fifth trip to the Big Dance. Out of their previous four NCAA Tournament berths, they were a 16 seed for three of those.

Historically, the Bulldogs have two NCAA Tournament wins to their name after securing First Four wins in both 2003 and 2011. Asheville’s most prominent tournament moment came in 2012, when they flirted with history in a narrow 72-65 loss to the first-seeded Syracuse Orange.

Regardless of who the Bulldogs meet to start the NCAA Tournament, they will find themselves as significant underdogs. But every March there is at least one team from a similar mold as UNC Asheville that emerges to capture the hearts and minds of college basketball fans far and wide.  Led by the dynamic duo of Drew Pember and Tajion Jones, Mike Morrell’s Bulldogs could possess the formula needed to be that team this go around.