If you grow up with a basketball and a hoop, you probably dream about playing in the NCAA Tournament. Certainly, that’s how it was for Michael O’Connell growing up in Mineola. And now, in his fourth year and second destination in college basketball, he is getting to live it.
And his team – North Carolina State – couldn’t have gotten there without him.
O’Connell made one of the biggest plays of championship week, a buzzer-beating three-point bank shot that forced the Wolfpack’s ACC Tournament semifinal against Virginia to overtime, where they prevailed. N.C. State, the 10th seed, won five games in five days to win the championship, beating soon-to-be-named NCAA Tournament No. 1 seed North Carolina in the final.
“I just saw a little opening and just stepped into it with confidence, trying to knock it down,” O’Connell said in a telephone interview from Pittsburgh on Wednesday. “Looking back on it now it’s still pretty surreal. I was able to help my team get to the ACC championship and make it here? I’m still trying to wrap my head around it.”
“Michael’s shot, man, that’s a great shot, and I had a direct view of it,” N.C. State coach Kevin Keatts said after the semifinal win. “As it went up I was like, man, that shot is going in, it’s going in, and then luckily it did and sent us to overtime.”
The automatic bid got the Wolfpack (22-14) into the 68-team draw, and as a No. 11 seed in the South Region, they will face No. 6 Texas Tech (23-10) on Thursday night at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh.
“When I was a little kid, it’s something that I dreamed about: first playing college basketball, and then winning championships in college basketball, then making it to March in the NCAA Tournament . . . To live it right now is an unbelievable experience.”
O’Connell’s journey to the Big Dance started with him earning Newsday All-Long Island honors at Chaminade and then taking his senior year at Blair Academy (N.J.), facing top high school…
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