My soul roots for UAB. So when Mo Finley head-faked a flying Chuck Hayes, stepped forward and drained a game-winning 18-foot jumper with 12 seconds left on Sunday night, I hit basketball nirvana.

“You can’t make this stuff up,” Greg Gumbel said moments later, back in CBS studios after a 76-75 Blazer victory.

I knew I couldn’t have. I had faithfully watched my favorite team lose in its only previous national TV appearances—at Louisville, at Memphis and on a neutral court against DePaul in the C-USA Tournament.

Nonetheless, UAB was absolutely addictive to watch. Ever since they had fired the inept Murray Bartow in 2002 and hired Mike “Forty Minutes of Hell” Anderson away from Arkansas, they have become the most entertaining show in the nation.

They ran. They trapped. They led the nation in steals (two years in a row).

So it was easy to anticipate the Blazer-adoring media onslaught that followed.

“UAB: stands for ‘Upsetting America’s Bracket,’” declared ESPN.com’s Dan Shanoff.

The players—including the affable, charismatic Finley—did their part, charming the media to their side.

Carldell “Squeaky” Johnson, UAB’s dreadlocked, steal-happy point guard, was voted “First Team All-Hair” by ESPN.com.

The Blazers’ identical twin forwards, Ronell and Donell Taylor, stole the hearts of sports fans by combining to make the play of the tournament—a blind, two-handed backwards pass by the former for a one-handed slam on the other end by the latter—that Miami Herald columnist Dan LeBatard called “the top play I’ve seen in this tournament in ten years.”

“UAB,” Shanoff wrote, was “the Most Telegenic Team Left.”

And now, my point. You see, despite my foolhardy pride, my Alabama arrogance, there’s something else at work here.

I’ve been talking up UAB’s Blazers for months. But not any more so because I hail from Bama than because I’d pay to watch them play.

Forget about me. Let’s talk about you. When lovable UAB tips off tomorrow night in St. Louis against the Kansas Jayhawks—NCAA basketball’s equivalent of Rocky IV’s Ivan Drago—remember one important thing.

The Blazers aren’t just my team. They could be yours, too.

Who’d root against that?

—Staff writer Alex McPhillips can be reached at rmcphill@fas.harvard.edu. His column appears on alternate Thursdays.