WASHINGTON -- This was Anthony Grundy's dream, even when he was about the only one left who believed he'd ever realize it.

Anthony Grundy's difficult journey makes this NCAA appearance even more special.(AP)

This was Anthony Grundy's dream when he came up in chaos in the Village West section of Louisville, when he was a teen-ager with no father but plenty of temptations, when a gang promised to kill him, when the gun that he thought would protect him got him booted from school and bounced from basketball.

This was the dream when he wound up all the way out in Bowling Green, Ky., in the home of a youth minister he didn't know, with the state athletic commission trying to hold him out of high school ball even if he was little more than a skinny Louisville playground legend.

Friday, they said Anthony Grundy overcame foul trouble to score 16 points and grab six rebounds as North Carolina State won its first NCAA Tournament game, 69-58 over Michigan State, in 11 years. It wasn't a real surprise Grundy didn't view four fouls as much to overcome.

"This is very special," said Grundy. "Just getting to play (was) something I spent a lot of time thinking about this week. Playing (in the NCAA Tournament) was something I've thought about for a long time."

"This," said pastor Tim Colovos of Bowling Green's Hillvue Heights Church, who took Grundy in when no one else would, "was his lifelong dream. Just playing today was so much more than just playing a game. He had the chance to fulfill a life dream, something he never stopped dreaming of."

The NCAA Tournament is about brackets and upsets and buzzer-beaters. It's also about little kids watching on television each spring and dreaming of getting there, promising to be there, or setting that one goal because as long as the odds are, they aren't the longest.

"Basketball is Anthony Grundy's life," said Colovos. "If he had ever given up on basketball, he would have given up on everything."

But what happens when basketball gives up on you? Grundy was raised poor by his grandparents, Donald and Lennie Grundy. He never knew his father. He spent almost every waking, non-school minute as a kid at the Shawnee Park playgrounds or competing in the city's summer Dirt Bowl tournament.

He resisted drugs and trouble until his junior year at Louisville Central, when his life was threatened by a street gang. The next day, he brought a gun to school and was caught. The kid who was supposed to kill him wound up murdered himself within a year.

Grundy was bounced from school, winding up a small school with no basketball team. He wasn't happy, it wasn't right. A former assistant at Central, Kris Vance, who now works on the staff at the University of Louisville, tried to find a safer place.

"Anthony is not a bad kid, he's a good student," said Vance on Friday. "We had to get him out of a dangerous environment."

So Vance called Colovos who, despite being just 27, single and white, took a shot at taking in a black teen-ager with a history.

"It was a chance to reach out to a kid and not just a kid in my church," he said.

In Bowling Green, Grundy needed a court injunction just to play. He wasn't heavily recruited anyway (he originally signed with Bradley) until he dominated the Kentucky-Indiana all-star games after his senior year. He wound up at Hargrave Military Academy in Virginia and eventually signed with N.C. State. Then he missed the first semester because of non-academic eligibility issues.

The whole tale is a blur (and this is the short version), a series of setbacks that would have caused most to give up.

"I just didn't want to give up," said Grundy. "I was just not going to give up on myself. I just kept saying, 'Keep working.'"

Which is why just playing Friday was a triumphant conclusion to a glorious senior season. That the Pack won and looked so good doing it is even sweeter. That Grundy will play again Sunday, against Connecticut, means the dream keeps going.

The Pack certainly wouldn't be here with the 6-3 guard. He leads the team in scoring (17.9), rebounding (5.5), assists (3.3) and steals (2.2), the first N.C. State player to do so since they kept keeping statistics in all those categories. What he prides himself in is doing all of that in the flow of the game. Even Friday, when he played just 24 minutes, he put up big numbers so quietly he was easy to miss.

"I do what happens in the game. I flow with it. I don't just go out and try to get all the points or get all the rebounds. It's what comes to me."

He has been the catalyst for this team on and off the court, leading the Pack to its first NCAA appearance since 1991, in a season when his coach, Herb Sendek, was on the hot seat.

"He's made so much progress," said Sendek. "It's been so great to see him develop these four years as a young man and as a basketball player."

None of Grundy's family was able to attend Friday's game here because the cost was too high. But back in the West Village, he knew his grandparents and mother, Yolanda, were crowded around the television. Out in Bowling Green, Colovos was beyond excited as he watched. Even in the Louisville basketball offices, where he was working, Vance followed the game on SportsLine.com.

"It's a blessing from God that he has persevered through so much," said Vance. "I always felt he had a guardian angel watching over him. That situation he's come through was just a mess."

Grundy is philosophical about it. He admits the journey was winding, but he credits the people around him, from the grandparents to Colovos to Sendek. Mainly he is just thankful he is here in the tournament he once watched wide-eyed on television and swore to himself he'd play in one day.

For at least one more game, North Carolina State and Anthony Grundy's dream play on.