By Zach Seidel



The journey started on March 8. I was at lunch while working in my job as the UMBC director of multimedia communications in athletics, looking at the America East Championship game preview on ESPN’s web site. The Retrievers were matched against top-seeded Vermont, and a bid to the NCAA Tournament was on the line. That’s when I spotted a graphic that noted UMBC had around an 8 percent chance of winning. I took a screen shot.



Sure, Vermont had beaten us 23 consecutive times over the past 10 years. Nonetheless something reasonated with me, and I wanted to have this graphic saved. Just in case.



Fast-forward two days to Patrick Gym in Burlington, Vt. Jairus Lyles hits a 3-pointer with 0.6 seconds left to stun the Catamounts. Standing in a parking lot at Morgan State University surrounded by delirious members of our softball team (I am the softball contact and had to help score our game that day), I opened my camera roll and fired off a...