SAN ANTONIO _ In the euphoria of Loyola-Chicago winning the Missouri Valley Conference tournament to earn its first NCAA Tournament berth since 1985, no image resonated with Ramblers coach Porter Moser more than what he witnessed in a Scottrade Center corridor on the way to the interview room.
Walking behind Overland Park, Kan., natives Ben Richardson and Clayton Custer, Moser was struck by "the most real little-kid moment you've ever seen."
It wasn't just that the Blue Valley Northwest High School graduates wore their celebratory hats backwards and further adorned with nets that had just been snipped down.
It was the distinct body language between the young men who'd been playing together since third grade.
Along the way, they bumped each other and hit each other playfully, even smacking each other on the head and saying things like "can you believe this?"
"Like it was T-ball, and they just hit a home run in T-ball," Moser said Thursday as Loyola prepared to play Michigan in the national semifinals on Saturday. "They were like two little kids."
That innocence and improbability is at the heart of 11th-seeded Loyola's journey here _ and the essence of its meaning in a group otherwise made up of perennial powers and No. 1 seeds Kansas and Villanova and the third-seeded Wolverines.
"I think we're what's right about college basketball," Custer said.
Loyola is the one that doesn't resemble the others, the one that Moser likes to say hasn't had a dunk yet in the NCAA tourney (although one finger-roll lay-in that some are debating as such) but is defined by dazzling ball movement that honors the game, and sneaky-good defense.
The one that has 98-year-old team chaplain Sister Jean, whose bobbleheads were selling on eBay for $53 on Thursday afternoon and will conduct a news conference of her own on Friday.
The one that no one saw coming and in some senses appreciate this more than anyone else here.
The team now besieged with media began the season receiving regular coverage only from the student newspaper (the Loyola Phoenix). Players actually were asked to hand out flyers or post them in dorms to help convince people to come to games.
"We were personally hanging them up and handing them out," Loyola's Aundre Jackson said.
Now, they marvel that they actually get their own rooms in San Antonio and can't believe the fuss being made over them.
"It's insane, the attention we got, the arena, just everything. It's crazy. I think that's why it's called March Madness," said sophomore Bruno Skokna, who is from Croatia. "This is another level. We're treated like kings, like presidents. I think it might even be a little bit too much."
Beyond all that, Moser's profile stands in radical contrast to his colleagues'.
KU coach Bill Self has won 654 games overall and 47 in NCAA tourney play, and a national title; Villanova coach Jay Wright has won 542 games and is 24-13 in the NCAA tourney with a national title; Michigan coach John Beilein has won 540 games and is 23-11 in NCAA play.
Moser is 226-211 overall and had a losing record at Loyola before its 32-5 outburst this season, and he bears a rare distinction among Final Four coaches in general:
His past includes being fired as a head coach.
That was at Illinois State in 2007 by then-athletic director Sheahon Zenger, now the AD at Kansas.
Zenger agonized over the decision, his first firing of a coach, but Moser was 51-67 and the firing was understood in the MVC offices.
On Thursday at the Alamodome, Zenger said no one is more excited for Moser than he is and encouraged "any young coach who's been through tough times" to look to Moser.
"It's a great story of reinvention," Zenger said. "This is the best story of the year."
Moser was shattered by being fired, saying Thursday that there was a period of "mourning." But that circumstance has made for a coaching point _ one that he leaned forward in his chair to address.
"You know, adversity doesn't have to define you. And some of the worst things that (have) happened in my life, starting at a young age, some of the best things have followed," he said. "And I'm proud of that and it's become who I am. And the more you tackle adversity, the more confidence you have to face adversity."
In his case, he said, he dove into "a competitive reinvention process" by immersing himself into Rick Majerus' program at St. Louis University.
Moser considered the late Majerus a genius, and four years later he felt ready to coach again when Loyola called for what Moser would term "a complete grassroots rebuild" entailing a drive for new facilities and push to re-engage Chicago in the program.
In the new job, he'd matured _ though not so much that he won't still call his own angry outbursts "immaturity."
And he prospered by the influence of Majerus, of whom he can speak all day and who is widely quoted in bits and pieces of maxims on Loyola's "Wall of Culture."
"And the accumulation of all these things make the whole," he said.
Just like this team is greater than the sum of its parts.
Including, ultimately, two from the same Blue Valley Northwest squad who are happy to tell you they are unimposing physically.
"It just goes to that Coach (Ed Fritz, their coach at BVNW) really taught us how to play the game the right way," Custer said. "Taught us how to be tough, taught us how to be gritty and to play together and to play hard."
Now here they are in San Antonio, the site of Kansas' 2008 national title on a run in some ways inspired by that very moment.
Hours after Sherron Collins' dribble and handoff to Mario Chalmers for KU's late, game-tying 3-pointer against Memphis, Custer and Richardson were recreating the play over and over in a gym.
As he looked back at some video of those days presented to him in the locker room on Thursday, Richardson laughed at the oversized jerseys and braces.
And he delighted in talking about how a team that had to beseech people to come to games early in the season now can't handle the demand for tickets.
"I know a lot of my friends are talking about renting an RV," Richardson said, noting that with KU here, too, "It makes it like you can't pass this up."
But not too good to be true.
Because it was in his wildest dreams since he'd been able to dribble a basketball _ shortly before he met Custer, who was recruited by Loyola after he decided to leave Iowa State.
One day before a recruiting dead period kicked in, Moser drove to Des Moines to meet Clayton, then toward Kansas City to meet his parents.
Richardson smiles at Moser's effort but joked that he takes 97 or 98 percent of the credit for getting him there.
And now ... here in San Antonio, where the two still are having little kid moments that epitomize Loyola's surprising and inspiring rise.
"It just kind of seems," Custer said, "like all the stars aligned."
