HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The regular season came to a crashing end after the UAH men's basketball team fell to Valdosta State in the GSC championship game. But now they're looking at a NCAA Division II tournament birth and they're seeing it as a second chance and they're hoping they can take this one all the way
"I'm just letting you know that they're missing one accomplishment and that's winning an NCAA tournament," says Coach John Shulman.
The UAH men's basketball team has accomplished a lot over the years, but this particular group has pushed it further than any other.
"They've won a tournament championship, they've won a regular season championship they've been to now 3 NCAA tournaments."
The group has gone 40-8 in their two years under Head Coach John Shulman. Guys like Sam Orf, Kerney Lane, Seth Swalve and even Coach Shulman's son Max have help lead the team to where they are today. Though a loss was apart of their journey, Shulman says it wasn't their end goal.
"Winning the regular season was great, being back in the championship game was really cool," says Shulman. "I think at sometime or another we had to change our mindset that we want to do something nationally instead of doing something in the GSC."
The Chargers are looking a round one bye in the national tournament. The players say that bye is one of the most valuable gifts they could received after such a tough season.
"Oh its awesome, you got the whole team i mean everyone's just running their last leg," says Max Shulman. "You know JJ has been battling it out the whole year. We're old and we haven't ever been here before. We should've played last year, we played the year before and got beat in the first round so to skip a whole round and everything that goes with it is huge. its really really huge."
"Yeah we're really excited and honestly not a lot of teams are left playing," says Kerney Lane. "So that's a really good feeling to have but we're still hungry and still have a lot left to accomplish."
So again this is the third season in a row the Chargers have made a tournament appearance but overall they've only made the tournament 13 times in school history. They received a bye in round one which means their first game in the tournament will be between the winner of Lee and Georgia Southwestern. In Huntsville on Kayla Carlile WZDX Sports.