Year of the upsets continues

Little more than two months after Appalachian State’s upset of mighty Michigan on the football field, Gardner-Webb, a 4,000-student school in North Carolina that became a Division I program only seven years ago, upset basketball blueblood Kentucky in Rupp Arena on Wednesday night.

At 7 a.m. Thursday morning, former walk-on Grayson Flittner, a small-town Indiana high school player virtually no college wanted, stumbled off the bus after the all-night ride back to Boiling Springs, N.C., and went to his 8 a.m. class.

“Spanish,” said Flittner, who had 22 points and five assists as Gardner-Webb felled the No. 20 Wildcats, 84-68, by attacking the taller team into oblivion with backdoor cuts and driving layups. “Then I got a couple of hours of sleep and went back to my 12 o’clock class.

“It’s about my bedtime now,” he said late Thursday afternoon. “But I’m ecstatic. I’m happy for our team, our coaching staff and the city of Boiling Springs.”

The last time Gardner-Webb, a Baptist-affiliated school, made national news was in 2002 for a grade-tampering scandal that cost school president Christopher White his job after he interceded to keep a basketball player academically eligible. The school was put on three years’ NCAA probation, which ended in March.

“I hope nobody will really resurrect all that,” said Boiling Springs Mayor Max J. Hamrick, who has served on the university’s board of trustees. “It was a very ugly, unfortunate situation.”

On Thursday, the focus was on a victory Hamrick said he hoped would bring recognition to the university.

At the least, it is the latest in a series of upsets that are making people realize the little guys can play too.

No school has won more college football games than Michigan, and no school has won more college basketball games than Kentucky. Yet both were knocked off at home by smaller, poorer athletic programs whose campuses, by coincidence, are only 110 miles apart.

Appalachian State, at least, had a resume, with consecutive NCAA Division II national championships in football.

Gardner-Webb was 9-21 last season, losing to North Carolina by 53 points and to Wisconsin by 58. This season, the Runnin’ Bulldogs were picked to finish eighth in the Atlantic Sun Conference.

Coach Rick Scruggs had so little expectation of advancing to the final two rounds of the 2K Sports College Hoops Classic at New York’s Madison Square Garden next week that he scheduled games for Tuesday and Saturday.

Now Gardner-Webb will play four games in five days.

Kentucky fans, giddy over the arrival of Coach Billy Gillispie to replace embattled Tubby Smith, had already booked New York hotel rooms. Some of those were being offered to Gardner-Webb on Thursday. On EBay, sellers from Kentucky towns were peddling tickets.

There have been unexpected results in recent exhibitions as well, with Michigan State losing to Division II Grand Valley State and Ohio State losing to Findlay, another Division II team.

One only needs to recall George Mason’s run to the Final Four in 2006 or Butler’s victory in the NIT Season Tip-Off last season to know the so-called little guys can’t be discounted.

Maybe it’s time recruiters figured it out, too.

One of the eye-opening performances of the NCAA tournament last season was by Davidson’s Stephen Curry, a slight freshman who, despite being the son of former NBA player Dell Curry, was passed on by every school in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Butler’s star is A.J. Graves, a savvy small-town Indiana player who is a skinny 6 feet 1 and didn’t draw much interest beyond mid-majors.

Flittner drew even less, even though he led all Indiana high school players in scoring two seasons ago, and future NBA players Greg Oden and Mike Conley were in his class.

“My senior class had, I believe, 74 people,” said Flittner, who averaged 29.1 points as a senior at Tri-Central High in Sharpsville, Ind.

Yet Flittner had another opportunity to get noticed. He played on the same travel team as Oden and Conley, Spiece Indy Heat. He still had only one offer, from Eastern Illinois.

“I didn’t get many looks, and then an assistant from here called and said they had a walk-on spot,” Flittner said. “I’m a 6-foot kid, not very athletic. There’s nothing people can really point to, to say I’m a mid-major or even low-major D-I player.

“There are a lot of people out there like me.”

robyn.norwood@latimes.com