SPOKANE, Wash. — The fun began long before North Dakota State Coach Saul Phillips, in the middle of a news conference Friday (the man has turned scripted drudgery into performance art), asked his boss for a raise. Phillips joked that he got the job in the first place because he “had pictures” of his boss, the athletic director, who just laughed.

“I can rip them up now,” Phillips said in the afterglow of the university’s first N.C.A.A. tournament victory, an 80-75 overtime win over Oklahoma on Thursday. “I’m safe.”

It truly began seven years ago, when Phillips was a North Dakota State assistant and the head coach, Tim Miles, left for Colorado State. (He now coaches Nebraska.) Phillips went to the office of the athletic director, Gene Taylor.

“ ‘Please, please, give me the chance,’ ” Taylor recalled Phillips saying. “He literally pounded on my desk.”