West Slide Story / Top-seeded Stanford, No. 2 Gonzaga knocked out in the second round

"I'm sitting over there with about 15 seconds to go in the game, thinking, 'Are you kidding me? It's going to happen to us,' " Alabama Coach Mark Gottfried said.

But Stanford ran out of miracles when Dan Grunfeld's three-point shot at the buzzer to try to send the game to overtime bounded off the rim, and Alabama celebrated a 70-67 second-round upset of the top-seeded and No. 1-ranked Cardinal.

Stanford was the first of the NCAA tournament's four No. 1-seeded teams to fall.

"I think they definitely feared -- and we definitely had a sense on the bench -- that maybe this would be one of those magical moments again where we could pull it out," Stanford center Rob Little said.

Not this time.

Down by eight points with 29 seconds to go, Stanford cut the lead to three with the help of two three-point baskets by Matt Lottich, the last one with nine seconds left.

When Alabama's Earnest Shelton missed two free throws with six seconds left, the Cardinal had one last chance and no timeouts -- but visions of last-second victories over Arizona and Washington State were on almost everyone's minds.

"Yeah, it felt like it could happen again, but obviously it didn't," Stanford point guard Chris Hernandez said.

Nick Robinson, the hero of the Arizona game, rebounded Shelton's miss, pushed the ball upcourt and got it to Grunfeld, perhaps 20 feet from the basket.

"I didn't even think about it, I just rose up and shot it," Grunfeld said, still red-eyed after the game. "It didn't go in. When it left my hands, I thought maybe it had a chance, but it didn't go in. I don't know what happened. I ended up on the ground, and I did see it graze off the rim."

Stanford Coach Mike Montgomery's voice seemed to crack with emotion when he talked about the final game of a team that won its first 26 before losing to Washington in the final game of the regular season. Stanford finished 30-2, with the school's fifth second-round loss in six years.

"It's hard to figure out what to say," Montgomery said. "It is really difficult. These kids have accomplished so much this year and it is so hard to end it in this particular situation."

For eighth-seeded Alabama, it will not end until at least next week, when the Crimson Tide will face Syracuse in a regional semifinal Thursday in Phoenix.