The announcement that Georgia Tech was selected for an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament brought back some fond memories for me. Our first round opponent is UNLV, the same school Tech faced in the national semifinals in 1990. I was 13 then, and not in to sports at all. My Dad was watching some basketball game on TV, so I decided to hang out with him and see what was up. Tech was playing in the first round of some big tournament, and he explained how there were 64 teams and the winner is the national champion. Tech won the game, and it was really exciting. The next game was two days later, I made sure to watch. They won again, this time in a last second thriller, if I remember correctly. By the 3rd round, I was a basketball nut. I had read all the articles in the AJC about the team, and Kenny Anderson was my favorite point guard of all-time (based on a sample size of one week), I had a GT poster on my wall, and my Dad and I had something to bond over. We still share our thoughts on the phone immediately after almost every GT basketball and football game.

My new interest in sports came at the right time. Tech reached the final four that year, and then the football team won the national championship that fall. And soon after the Braves began their remarkable run, though to be fair, I remember watching a lot of Braves games in the early 80's in the house I lived in until I was 8.