BALTIMORE — The stunning victory by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, over the University of Virginia on Friday night — the biggest upset ever in the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament — catapulted a school whose competitive claim to fame had long been chess into sports history.

But the U.M.B.C. Cinderella story transcends athletics, and has been decades in the making.

The university, founded in 1966, is better known for producing the most African-American students who go on to complete combined M.D.-Ph.D. programs than it is for turning out professional athletes. Before its 20-point win over the nation’s top-ranked basketball team, it was the reigning National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition champion. A statue of the school’s mascot, a Chesapeake Bay retriever named True Grit, has a shiny nose from the tradition of students’ rubbing it for good luck before finals, rather than before big games.

U.M.B.C., which has about 14,000 students and is situated about a 10-minute drive from downtown Baltimore, has come to embrace its underdog status in Maryland’s public university system. It is among the newer of the system’s 12 institutions, and it has worked to overcome a reputation as a commuter school without a football team.

After last night’s victory, the U.M.B.C. athletic department took a jab at the system’s flagship school, the University of Maryland, College Park, which had a blowout victory over the Retrievers earlier in the season but failed to make the N.C.A.A. tournament. U.M.B.C. retweeted a photo of a Maryland fan holding a sign at that December game saying that U.M.B.C. stood for “University of Maryland Backup College.”