Kevin Mackey kneaded his hands together obsessively, feeling sweat begin to pinprick into tiny beads across his forehead as the pounding of his pulse in his ears sounded like waves along Lake Erie's rocky shore.

The room he sat in on this Sunday evening, filled with such young, vibrant energy just a few minutes before, had drawn eerily silent once six o’clock arrived. Everyone watched morbidly over the next few minutes as the names of dozens of other schools popped up on the television screen. But not theirs.

Twenty-four hours before, the 1985-86 Cleveland State Vikings had completed their mission, doing everything in their power to earn their first invitation to the NCAA tournament. With a gritty win over Eastern Illinois witnessed by less than 2,800 spectators in Springfield, Missouri, the Vikings had captured their first Association of Mid-Continent Universities (affectionately known as the AMCU-8) tournament championship with their 12^th straight victory, bringing their overall record to an impressive 27-3.

But now, with the NCAA tournament in just its second year as a 64-team field and the qualification process still evolving, Cleveland State was at the mercy of the selection committee. And as the names scrolled across the screen on the tiny television in this cramped room in the CSU Physical Education Building, it looked more and more like the Vikings were going to get passed over – just as they had the year before by both the NCAA and NIT committees despite 21 victories and their first regular-season AMCU-8 crown.

Now, as the 1986 tournament bracket began to fill in, the Vikes’ third-year head coach was getting a bad feeling. Ohio Valley Conference champ Akron, whom Cleveland State had defeated by 12, was announced. Then came DePaul, whom the Vikings had trounced by 15 at the Rosemont Horizon in January. Of course, Big Ten champ Michigan was in as a No. 2 seed, and Mackey wondered if anyone on the selection committee knew that his Vikings had given the Wolverines a good half of basketball back in December, trailing by only two at the intermission.

As each school’s name was announced and the number of spots left on the bracket dwindled, it just didn’t feel like it was going to happen.

The top half of the fourth and final bracket filled in – still no Cleveland State. Mackey knew, even if his players didn’t, that if they weren’t invited now, they never would be. There was nothing more he could do, no better team he could assemble here, none that was better qualified to earn a tournament spot. It looked as though once again these talented but generally unrefined young athletes, most from inner-city neighborhoods, would be passed over. They would never have another shot to show how good they could be.

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Cleveland State survived to play another day in the National Invitational Tournament.

With CSU leading by three with 4.4 seconds left, the Vikings dodged the bullet at the end as Vermont's Matt Glass had a good look at a game-tying three-point attempt from the top of the key, but it bounced four times on the rim before eventually falling to the floor.

Giving CSU the win, 63-60, Tuesday night at the Wolstein Center, in the opening round of the NIT.

The second-seeded Vikings (27-8) advance to face the sixth-seeded College of Charleston, who upset third-seeded Dayton on Tuesday.

The Catamounts, the American East Conference regular season champions, finished the season at 23-9.

It was CSU's first win in the NIT since 1988. The 27 wins are second-highest single season total in school history, trailing only the 1985-86 squad who won 29.

The win was head coach Gary Waters' 100th-career victory at CSU. He's 100-70 in five seasons at CSU and 271-205 in 15 years as a head coach.

They won again despite being dominated on the boards (45-29) and being outscored in bench points (28-7). Both statistics have been CSU's Achilles heel this season.

"That tells you how resilient our team is," Waters said. "They keep fighting regardless of size, regardless of anything. They are going to compete and give themselves a chance to win."

CSU overcame those deficits by causing 16 turnovers with their pressure defense, which led to a 16-12 advantage in points off turnovers.

"They had trouble handling our pressure," Waters said. "That's what won the game. Sometimes our pressure gets to people early, but today it got to them later."

The Vikings also made five more three-pointers then Vermont. CSU went 7-of-20 (35 percent) from three-point range, while UVM was 2-of-13 (15.4 percent).

The Catamounts held a 27-25 lead at the half as they shot 50 percent (13-of-26) from the field in the opening half. The Vikings would struggle in the first half as they shot 33.3 percent (9-of-27) against UVM's 1-3-1 zone.

The second half belonged to CSU's Norris Cole, as the Horizon League's Player of the Year, once again, carried CSU on his back. He scored 16 of his game-high 27 points in the second half.

Cole's lay-up with 1:27 left put CSU up for good, 59-57. Then he extended it to four on a pair of free throws on their next possession.

With five seconds left, UVM's Brendan Bald broke a CSU double-team and took an off-balance three-pointer that somehow went in to close UVM within, 61-60.

Cole then would calmly sink a pair of free throws with four seconds left, extending it to, 63-60.

"I go through my routine. [I] shoot the ball, follow through and it goes in," Cole said on shooting the clutch free throws down the stretch. "When you think about it that's when you miss."

On UVM's last second shot, they wanted to get the inbounds pass to Sandro Carissimo, according to UVM coach Mike Lonergan, but he fell down. So the second option was Glass coming off a screen.

"I thought when it came back it was going in, but it wasn't meant to be," Lonergan said. "We didn't want one of our guards to have it because their defenders are so good at the guard position. So we set up a screen for Matt and had a nice look at it. That's all you can ask for."

Junior center Aaron Pogue was the only other Viking in double-figures with 11 points. He also added eight rebounds.

UVM was led in scoring by Pat Bergmann with 16 points. They also had 12 from Luke Apfeld and 11 from Bald.

The Catamounts played without their leading scorer Evan Fjeld (14.5 points per game), who missed the game with a back injury.

CSU's defense would hold UVM to 34.4 percent (11-of-32) in the second half. While their offense started to figure out UVM's 1-3-1 zone in the second half as they shot 44 percent (11-of-25) from the field, including 5-of-11 from three-point range.

The date and location of CSU's second round NIT game against COC has yet to be determine, but Waters ended his postgame conference saying, "We are getting a home game," he said. "It's either going to be Saturday or Monday."

There’s been talk in recent years of Cleveland State dropping the “State” from its official name.

There’s a feeling that “State” makes the university sound more like a community college, thereby weighing down its reputation and limiting its growth potential.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with that mentality, Saturday night offered proof that it’s finally time to bring this entity into the M.C. Escher landscape of disappointment and suffering that is Northeast Ohio sports and make it an even more anchored part of this community.

Come what may in the carousel of board of trustee meetings that will be held high atop Rhodes Tower in the coming years, on Saturday night in Milwaukee, with a 76-68 Viking loss to Butler, “Cleveland University” was born.

In case there was any doubt before, it’s gone now. These are our guys. Not necessarily in the sense that enough hoops fans have fallen in love with this team, but that the Vikings have now been indoctrinated (or perhaps more appropriately, have indoctrinated us) into Cleveland lore.

To wit: they got our hopes up, then let us down.

In what promised to be our first winter without competitive basketball in at least five years, these Vikings came on hard and fast with the unspoken promise that they’d help us forget The Soulless One the way a new girlfriend gets us over the previous one (in this case, after the former gave us syphilis and then set our carpet on fire and disemboweled our dog on her way out the door).

To their credit, for much of the winter they did. They started 12-0, then 15-1, then 21-3. Then, it seemed, after getting lightly pimp-slapped by Butler on their own home court before an ESPN2 audience, they locked up a bit. And really, who can blame them? It was only a bunch of 20-year-old kids not good enough to get scholarships to Big Ten schools being expected to turn around an entire city’s emotional status - and maybe create 4,000 jobs in the process.

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SportsTime Ohio will televise both Horizon League quarterfinals games from Milwaukee's U.S. Cellular Arena on Friday via the Horizon League Network. The games are also available on ESPN3.com.

The first game features No. 3 seed Cleveland State (25-7) taking on No. 6 Wright State (19-13) at 6 p.m. The second game features No. 4 Valparaiso (22-10) taking on No. 5 Detroit (17-15) at 8:30 p.m.

Will Haskett will handle the play-by-play and former Butler player Joel Cornette is the analysis.

The winner of the CSU-WSU game will take on No. 2 Butler on Saturday, and the winner of the Valpo-Detroit game will take on No. 1 Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

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