I grew up watching ABC's Wide World of Sports on Sunday afternoons. During the opening each week, you'd hear announcer Jim McKay utter the phrase, "The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat."

Well, a story I ran across earlier this week sort of combines both. There was thrill and there was agony. Just no defeat.

I love college basketball, as you might have guessed by now. I mean I love it all. And this week, when teams are participating in their conference tournaments, is particularly exciting. And that is especially true for the smaller-conference squads whose only avenue to the NCAA Tournament is through winning their conference tournaments.

So when they do, the pure joy and exhilaration they are experiencing after the final buzzer is quite palpable.

One such team is the Wofford Terriers. Wofford is a tiny college--enrollment's just over 1500--in Spartanburg, South Carolina. It's the type of team that will likely end up a sacrificial lamb to a 1-seed, but that still doesn't diminish the excitement of getting to the Big Dance.

Last week, the Terriers won the Southern Conference championship, punching a ticket to their second NCAA Tourney appearance in four years.

Senior Aerris Smith was a freshman on that 2011 team that made it. Now he's a senior. But in the interview that followed Wofford's bid-clinching victory over Western Carolina, Smith got choked up as he revealed something about the game just completed and one coming up in the NCAA Tournament.

Check out that very emotional interview:

 

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