The Slatest

NCAA Mistakenly Tells South Carolina It Made the Tournament, Just Now Gets Around to Apologizing

The championship trophy during the NCAA Men’s Final Four National Championship at Lucas Oil Stadium on April 6, 2015 in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

There are a whole host of analogies to what happened to the South Carolina men’s basketball team earlier this month and none of them are good. Think lottery tickets, college acceptances, test results, anything of great import, relayed to you with the utmost confidence by Steve Harvey. The team spent selection Sunday firmly on the bubble of making the NCAA tournament with a 24-8 regular season and 11-7 in the SEC. Like most teams, they waited for their name to get called to join the big dance and it was (!)—sort of. The team got word from the NCAA that they were in! But then, it turns out they weren’t.  

On Thursday, the NCAA sort of explained the mix up with a statement from NCAA vice president of men’s basketball championships Dan Gavitt:

“Unfortunately, during the selection show a junior men’s basketball staff member mistakenly sent a text to a member of the University of South Carolina athletics department staff via an app we used for the first time during the 2016 tournament. The text was supposed to go to all teams, congratulating them for making the tournament. Regrettably, a text meant for another institution went to South Carolina instead.”

“The congratulatory text went to South Carolina when it was supposed to go to USC, which is next to South Carolina in the App the NCAA was using,” a source told ESPN. “The text also was supposed to go out at the end of the whole bracket and not as it was unfolding, the source said.” The NCAA’s version of events is certainly excruciating enough, but the Times-Picayune reports perhaps an even more painful version if you’re a Gamecock fan:

Sources told NOLA.com that the person that makes the travel arrangements for NCAA tournament teams had actually had called South Carolina, told the Gamecocks they had been invited, then said to hold on and they would call back in 10 minutes. South Carolina never got the return call.

Whatever happened, on Thursday, the NCAA came clean and blamed it on an underling. They also publicly apologized to the University of South Carolina, a mere two-and-a-half weeks after the mix up. South Carolina put on a brave face and took its dashed dreams to the NIT where they lost to Georgia Tech in the second round.