UAB wants to give city reason to cheer

After the University of Alabama at Birmingham shut down its football program in December for financial reasons, the Blazers’ basketball team has provided the school a welcomed boost.

UAB captured Conference USA’s tournament over Middle Tennessee to earn an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament, the three tournament victories (including 53-52 over Western Kentucky and 72-62 in overtime over Louisiana Tech) boosting the Blazers’ season record to 19-15. The Blazers, seed 14th in the South Region, play No. 3 Iowa State in Thursday’s first of four games at the KFC Yum! Center, with tipoff at 12:40 p.m. ET.

“It was important for us just to give the city something to cheer for,” said guard Robert Brown, the Virginia Tech transfer whose 13.1 points per game leads UAB in scoring. “They were down about football, and it’s something that we’ve all kind of talked about, something that we wanted to just give the city and especially our UAB community.”

Coach Jerod Haase said it was tough seeing coaches he knew and his players’ friends lose their football program and scholarships. But, he said, “We never put it upon ourselves that, ‘Hey, this is bigger than us. We’ve got to do this. We’ve got to win this game for UAB.’ We really actually narrowed our focus and said, ‘We need to get better as a team right now. We need to focus on rebounding and defense and doing what we’re trying to do offensively.’… I do think it’s been a point of positive experiences, point of good feelings around UAB, and that’s a byproduct of what we did.”

Haase said he was told that UAB had the youngest team in the tournament. “I don’t know if we’re first or second youngest,” he said. “But at the end of the day, we do have a group that’s grown up a ton from the beginning of the year. One of the neat things about them is there’s a great deal of trust between the teammates and a great deal of trust between the players and coaches.

“We have had a couple of dips throughout the year. But when the stage is the greatest, I feel like the guys have really risen to those levels.”