COLUMBIA - The Missouri women's basketball team hosted a watch party Monday during the Selection Show for the NCAA Tournament, and for the most part it lived up to its name.
The Tigers watched and watched and watched as 60 slots came and went, with Missouri's fate still in question.
And then, the Tigers danced.
For the first time in a decade, Missouri will be competing in the NCAA Tournament. The Tigers received a No. 10 seed Monday and will play seventh-seeded BYU at 5:30 p.m. Saturday in Austin, Texas.
"Everyone was very nervous," freshman Cierra Porter said. "I think you could see all the raw emotion when we saw our name up there. This was something we've talked about since the beginning of the year. It wasn't the focus. We tried to take it one game at a time. But this was our ultimate goal."
Missouri reacted to the news by trading in clasped fingers and nervous toe taps for joyful jumps and tearful hugs - sometimes in the same motion, as when Southeastern Conference freshman of the year Sophie Cunningham leaped into the arms of her sister, junior Lindsey Cunningham.
Sophie Cunningham was so excited to see Missouri's name in the bracket she forgot to look for the Tigers' opponent.
"I just saw our name and I stopped paying attention," she said. "We all went crazy and then probably five to six minutes later I was like, "Wait, who are we even going and where are we going?' But I don't even care about that. I'm just excited we're going to the dance."
She wasn't kidding, either, turning Norm Stewart Court into her own personal dance floor.
The Missouri-BYU game was the second-to-last game announced, and considering the likelihood of Missouri playing in the No. 2-No. 15 game was negligible, it came down to the buzzer for Missouri.
That was true in more ways than one, as the NCAA said Missouri was one of the final four teams to make the cut for an at-large bid.
"It's hard to predict those kind of things, but I felt like we were in a pretty good spot," head coach Robin Pingeton said. "I told our girls before we came out here, I didn't know for sure how this was going to play out, but I was really, really proud of them ... and don't allow what happens in the next hour to determine the success that they feel about themselves and about our team."
The Tigers didn't help themselves down the stretch, with a loss to middling Vanderbilt to end the regular season and a two-point loss to Auburn in their first game of the SEC Tournament.
"They never talked about us being a bubble team, but as you go through this week's games, conference tournaments and you see some of those upsets, I think you can't help but wonder where you're going to fall into that category," Pingeton said. "I think from an RPI standpoint we were good. From a strength of schedule standpoint we were kind of teetering right there on the order, but you never know what's going to go through the mindset of that committee behind closed doors."
Drop in seed or not, Missouri is likely happy with its placement. The 10th seed in the Bridgeport Region might have been preferable to the eighth or ninth, as the winner of that game gets overall No. 1 seed Connecticut. The Huskies are 32-0 and have won the past three national championships. Instead, if Missouri can get past BYU, it will face either No. 2 seed Texas or No. 15 seed Alabama State.
The Cougars are 26-6 overall and the regular-season champions of the West Coast Conference with a 16-2 record. Pingeton was not yet familiar with BYU when the matchup was announced, though that will soon change.
"I have not seen them play this year," she said. "I've seen them play in the past, and they've always had a great program there and we've had a lot of success."
Missouri's last tournament appearance came in a 2006, when the Tigers lost 82-51 to Virginia Tech in the first round. Missouri's last tournament win came in 2001. The Tigers reached the Sweet Sixteen that year with wins against Wisconsin and Georgia.
The Tigers are 4-9 all time in the NCAA Tournament, this being their 10th appearance and 23rd selection to a postseason tournament. They have never advanced past the round of 16.
Pingeton took over in Missouri in 2010 and won her 100th game with the Tigers this season.
"We're super-excited about where we're at," she said. "We're not satisfied, but we're really proud of the growth that we've made over the last six years here at the University of the Missouri."
The SEC led all conferences with nine teams in the tournament. South Carolina received a No. 1 seed, Kentucky received a No. 3 seed, Texas A&M received a No. 4 seed, Mississippi State and Florida received No. 5 seeds, Tennessee received a No. 7 seed, Georgia received a No. 8 seed and Auburn received a No. 9 seed.
Missouri had wins this season against four of those teams - Georgia, Mississippi State, Florida and Auburn - and had another win against a tournament team in Missouri State.
They weren't able to pick up another in the conference tournament, however, falling to Auburn when an a layup that would have forced overtime failed to fall. After their early exit, Pingeton gave the Tigers five days off.
"At the time as a coach you feel like it seems like a little bit maybe too long of a break," she said. "But in hindsight I think we nailed it."
Multiple players said the practices since have been the team's best of the year. And with the Selection Show out of the way, the Tigers can devote all their energy to basketball.
"I think the big nervous thing was just getting selected, but now I think we're going to get back to focusing, doing everything we need to do to go out there and get a win," Porter said. "Or two. Or three. Or a lot."