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He went on to explain to me he learned to keep his guys that way because of his experience prior to a huge game against a nationally ranked opponent back when he was coaching St.Vincent St. Mary's HS and LeBron James. He said he didn't recognize his team - kids he'd known for years at that point - in the first quarter because they were playing so tight. He made a vow that he'd do everything possible to keep his teams loose from that point on.

Keith Dambrot

Another MAC coach noticed this a few months later in Cleveland at that year's MAC Tourney saying, "Akron walks around like they've won the thing five years in a row or something." I remembered thinking that's exactly how I'd want my team to look, like they weren't overwhelmed by the situation.  

There's a term for it -- practice like you want to play. In other words, walk around with a little strut long enough and eventually maybe that strut becomes second nature. Act like a champion and one day you'll be a champion. They weren't arrogant, it's not like the Zips were rolling around the Gund (now the Q) with supermodels on their arms, but they were just hanging out freely enough to make some uptight coaches notice it. 

And look what's happened a few years later.  

After getting to a few MAC championship games and coming up short, the kids who were pups when Romeo Travis, Jeremiah Wood and Dru Joyce were schooling them are now MAC Champions.  

Nate Linhart

Nate Linhart, a kid one Zip fan said on a public message board back in his freshman year "wasn't a D-1 player" is winning MAC Tournament MVP honors. Brett McKnight, a kid that Dambrot, Shaka Smart and Terry Wiegand effusively praised but other MAC coaches dismissed as fat, scores in multiple ways in the post and the perimeter and is the Zips' biggest worry for opposing teams -- while coming off the bench.

Steve McNees, the guard this writer fell in love with watching him torch opposing, more-hyped AAU guards for an entire summer, finally resembles that player just at the right time. And freshman guard Humpty Hitchens? He sure looked like a killer in that first half against Buffalo. All of this goes back to Dambrot's philosophy not to get too caught up in the stuff that, at the end of the day, really doesn't matter. 

Gonzaga has the talent to win this whole tournament -- make no mistake, they're that good. But thanks to the best coach in the MAC, the Zips don't give a damn about that.  

You might not think that feeling means a whole lot, and when the ball gets thrown up, who knows, maybe it won't. But the fact that they feel that way gives them that ever so slight, minute chance at shocking the world.

And isn't that what March Madness is all about?  

College hoops insider Ray Mernagh is the basketball contributing editor/writer for The Pittsburgh Sports Report, a writer for the Basketball Times and author of "1 Chance to Dance: A Season inside Mid-Major Hoops in Mid-America." Mernagh will be contributing a weekly column to MAC Report Online and is also the publisher of HoopWise.com.