Shout it out loud: USF men's basketball is heading to March Madness again!

Start with this number: 5,110.

That's how many days it has been since the USF men's basketball team played in an NCAA tournament game.

The date was March 18, 2012, and since then the Bulls could only dream of joining in the fun of March Madness and too many of those seasons turned into nightmares.

However, on Sunday afternoon in Birmingham, that drawn-out dream became a reality as the Bulls polished off Wichita State 70-55 in the American Conference tournament championship game.

For the first time in program history, the Bulls claimed regular-season and tournament championships in the same season.

It is a remarkable achievement for a team that had a new coaching staff, just one healthy returnning player, and relied on the Transfer Portal and a strong high school recruiting class.

The Bulls didn't have to wait long to find when they play their first NCAA tournament game. They will play 6th-seeded Louisville on Thursday in Buffalo. USF is seeded 11th. The game's location is especially significant to USF head coach Bryan Hodgson.

"I'm out there watching the selection show, and Buffalo, New York, popped up. I'm from Western New York," a visibly emotional Hodgson said.

"My father has dementia, and I've been a head coach for three years, and he's never seen me coach as a head coach in person because it's so hard for him to travel. He's gonna get to see me coach this week in person in the NCAA tournament, and, uh, that means a world to me.

The championship game was grinding, physical, and ferociously contested by both teams. It fit USF's blue-collar, lunch-bucket persona.

USF's Wes Enis, in addition to helping the Bulls get some separation with a pair of 3-pointers midway through the second half, played suffocating defense on Shockers sharpshooter Kenyon Giles.

Giles, who had 27 points in Wichita State's semifinal win over Tulsa, was held to five points.

"Shout out to USF," Giles said.

Enis was named the tournament MVP.

The Bulls also forced 14 turnovers and held Wichita State to 34 percent from the field.

"We've been good at ball security all year," Shockers coach Paul Mills said. ""I just thought their physicaliy really hampered us. I thought a lot of it just had to do with them. They were denying KG touches. "

That's because the Bulls were not going to be denied.

"To be in this chair and be able to do this was a dream as a child. So a foster kid, and a hectic household, my getaway was to be in the driveway and shoot hoops, and I fell in love with the game, I I I grew up watching this on TV," Hodgson said.

"I'm very fortunate to coach an unbelievable group of young men that weren't gonna let us lose. They make me, they make me look, like, a lot better coach than I am."