March Madness Moments: Another High Point Adds to the Beauty of Championship Week

High Point rectifying its heartbreak of 2024 exemplified the March Madness atmosphere that Championship Week ushers in each year.

It’s hardly a well-guarded secret among the college basketball-following community that Championship Week is often every bit as thrilling as March Madness. Realistically, the eight days of conference championship games serve as an extension of the NCAA Tournament rather than just being a prelude.

Coming to this realization helped me get over a long-held distaste for the regular-season champions of one-bid conferences losing out on the Big Dance due to the chaos of a single-elimination tournament. But then, what is March Madness built on if not the unpredictable chaos of that exact format?

To that end, the Big South Conference Championship between Winthrop and High Point was an emotional ride. On a personal note, High Point is a program I’ve hoped to see reach the NCAA Tournament for a few years now, dating back to its high under Tubby Smith.

The prospect of Smith becoming the first head coach to lead six different programs to the Big Dance, with the last of the six being his alma mater, intrigued me. Unfortunately, that wasn’t in the cards: The Panthers struggled mightily during Smith’s tenure, and Tubby’s predecessor at Kentucky, Rick Pitino, is instead on his way to helming a sixth Tournament-qualifier.

But once Alan Huss stepped in to replace G.G. Smith in 2023, High Point experienced an immediate turnaround. Last year’s Panthers won 27 games — the program’s most since its NAIA Tournament team in 1978-79 — playing one of the most offensively prolific styles in the nation with an 83.9-point per game output.

However, an overtime loss at home to Longwood, 80-79, coupled with the NIT abandoning its most redeeming quality, sent High Point to the College Basketball Invitational.

Again, I’ve come to terms with regular-season champions being ousted from March Madness through their conference tournaments as just part of what makes this month so entertaining. Still, that old nagging feeling of low-to-mid-majors compromising their best teams being in the NCAA Tournament for the modest monetary influx of having nationally televised championship games simmered as High Point trailed Winthrop by 15 points in the first half of the Big South Championship.

A basketball cliche based in reality that it’s exceedingly difficult to beat the same team three times in a season. That High Point routed Winthrop twice in the regular season, each time by 22 points, showed the Panthers to be the superior team. We’re not talking about Villanova losing to Georgetown by a combined nine points in the 1984-85 regular season before the Wildcats’ historic National Championship Game win, here.

In the end, though, all of it — last year’s unfortunate ouster, the 15-point deficit, and the 10-point gap at halftime — all contributed to this Big South Championship Game delivering a contest likely to rival the most entertaining March Madness provides this year.

High Point’s furious rally and clinical closing-out of Winthrop provided all the drama any non-partisan observer could want from March basketball. A loud contingent of Panthers fans who made the trip to Johnson City, Tennessee, provided a lively soundtrack. The journey High Point traveled to reach this point heightened the stakes.

And Huss entrusting his team’s historic season to his bench gave the Big South title tilt its own fascinating arc. High Point reserves combined to score 50 points, led by Bobby Pettiford’s 17 points.

Pettiford, a senior, heads into the NCAA Tournament with a three-game streak of scoring in double figures. He’s a prime candidate to be a March Madness star with his spark-plug energy and streaky scoring ability.

High Point joined this year’s first Tournament entrant, SIU Edwardsville, in the club of Big Dance first-timers. SIUE dominated Southeast Missouri in the Ohio Valley Championship to claim its ticket — a landmark moment for the program, no doubt, but not offering the same level of true March Madness energy that High Point’s Big South title delivered.

And that’s to say nothing of comparing how High Point earned its way in versus fellow first-timer Omaha, the regular-season Summit League champion guaranteed the conference’s automatic bid no matter how the Summit title round plays out. With the Mavericks’ championship opponent, St. Thomas, being ineligible for the NCAA Tournament due to divisional transition rules, the Summit League Championship Game is anticlimactic; not befitting the gravity of the occasion for a program crashing the Dance for the first time.

Though, to be fair, Omaha may have gotten its crowning March moment a few weeks early thanks to All Elite Wrestling tag team The Outrunners’ visit to the Mavericks practice.