TCU point guard Alex Robinson is confident, entering the NCAA tournament.
"I feel like we have a really, really good team. We're gonna shake up a lot of people's brackets, we're gonna make a lot of people mad," Robinson said with a smile. "So I look forward to that."
But before Robinson ran the point at TCU, he was at Texas A&M.
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"She said 'is this Darla Robinson', and I said 'Yes who is this?'," Robinson's mother Darla remembers of the call she received on the fateful day. "They said 'this is the nurse from so & so hospital'. And I go 'okay, is he okay?', and they said 'No, it's not him. He's fine.'"
Robinson was fine. Some of his friends were not.
"A couple of girls that they knew, they're close friends, that were in front of them, had lost control of their car," Darla recounted.
Four friends, trapped in destroyed vehicle.
"We just tried to get them out, and just tried to make sure everything was okay," Alex said. "We tried our best, but things just didn't go the way that we wanted it to go."
Two of the girls died, including Alexis Emmou, who Robinson was tending to.
"He told me that he actually felt her take her last breath," Darla said.
"Yeah, I still think about it a lot," Alex says. "In my locker I have the articles and stuff, just to remind me that life is really fragile, and you've just got to make every day the most of it."
Afterward, it became clear staying in College Station wouldn't work.
"He was a mess," his mother remembers. "He was pretty much in shock. And from that point, it was tough."
Then Pitt-coach Jamie Dixon, who had recruited Robinson when he was in high school, counseled the young point guard.
"I had told him to go to TCU," Dixon said. "I thought it would be a great place for him. But I had no clue that I'd be coaching him, when it was all said and done."
Now closer to home, and at his mother's alma mater, he's wearing her number.
"That was my first number, probably because of her, she probably made me wear 25."
A nod to a mother who helped him through his most difficult time.
"Her love and caring, I mean, somehow someway I really need to give back to her, and that's what I'm working towards right now, just giving her everything that she deserves."