At a time when it seems most of the nation's attention is fixated on "March Madness" -- the NCAA men's basketball championship, we hear a great deal about the raw, human emotion those tournament games can elicit.

But it is hard to imagine even the closest basketball contest bringing out more emotion than was felt by a team of Robert Morris University students at the recent Region IV College Bowl academic competition at California University of Pennsylvania.

It wasn't just the RMU team's strong second-place finish behind defending champion University of Maryland, Baltimore that was so emotional.

It was that the team's performance came barely a month after the tragic death of one of their own -- Michael Tatalovich -- in an off-campus shooting that also left another student dead and one critically wounded.

Not only had Tatalovich been a member of the RMU College Bowl team, he had practiced with the squad just hours before the still-unexplained shooting at a North Fayette apartment that killed him and Jonathan Gilbert, and wounded a third student, Michelle Machusko.

The first reaction of the team, not surprisingly, was to skip the tournament.

But they quickly realized that there was a far better way to honor the memory of their fallen friend and teammate.

"After talking to the team, we realized that we wanted to go and dedicate this tournament to him," said team captain Jessica Thompson, a feeling echoed by sophomore Justin Mosovsky.

"Michael would have wanted us to go," Mosovsky said.

So it was with heavy hearts and solemn resolve that team traveled last month to California. Pa. to battle the likes of Duquesne, Slippery Rock, Edinboro and others.

They received much-appreciated words of comfort and consolation from their fellow competitors, and found the strength to not only compete, but to excel.

It truly was their "One Shining Moment," and somewhere, Michael Tatalovich was smiling.