After beating South Alabama, the Wildcats had a bit of good luck: No. 5-seed Maryland had been upended by 12th-seeded College of Charleston, a 28-2 squad out of the Atlantic Sun Conference. The Cougars were no pushovers, led by center Thad Delaney and guard Anthony Johnson, who formed a potent inside-out trio.
College of Charleston actually led at the half 34-33, but the Wildcats responded with a second-half surge as Simon led the way with 20.
Edgerson: “At the end, when it really counted, we found a way to put it together. It had to do with timing. We always felt we had a good team; it just didn’t jell till the end.”
Simon: “We didn’t think of it as a gauntlet, because we never looked too far ahead. We saw who was the No. 1 seed in our bracket, but it’s not like we were looking at the Final Four. We saw South Alabama, and in our minds we thought we’d beat them fairly easily. I for sure knew COC was good, I knew Delaney and Anthony Johnson. But we weren’t gonna fear anybody. We just wanted to play. More so, teams needed to fear us because we had really good players.”
Rosborough: “The next game up for us was the biggest game, and that was one thing we always did real well — there wasn’t up and down preparation. If we were playing a school down here or at North Carolina, the prep was the same. I would think our guys would say they’d never go into a game feeling unprepared.”
