Today, several buses will ferry Mount St. Mary's basketball fans to Dayton, where the small Maryland school is making an improbable run at the NCAA tournament.

But first, the Mount St. Mary's family had business to take of closer to home. Yesterday, many of the students, staff and faculty headed to Towson to bid farewell to one of their own. Student Dustin Bauer, 22, died several days after an accidental fall on campus, his demise sadly coinciding with the rise of the basketball team that he enthusiastically supported as a "Mount Maniac."

"He would have been out here," Brad Gerick, 20, a student who manages the basketball team, said by telephone from Dayton yesterday.

The Mount's basketball team faces its in-state neighbor, Coppin State University, in tonight's play-in game in Dayton, with the winner going on as the 16th seed in the NCAA tournament. The low standing means that the victor of tonight's match will have to face as its first opponent the mighty first-seed team, North Carolina, but supporters say it's thrilling nonetheless and look forward to seeing how far they can go into the brackets.

Bauer has been "on everyone's mind," said Gerick, who writes for the school's newspaper and blogs for The Frederick News-Post. On the close-knit campus of the Catholic university - the school has fewer than 1,700 undergraduates, the majority of whom come from in-state - it's been an emotional week, swinging from the high of the basketball team winning its conference and heading to the NCAA tournament, to the low of Bauer's accident and death.

"Everyone knows everyone," Gerick said. "And everyone knew Dustin."

With his wild, gelled-up hair, outgoing personality and successes on the Mount's track team, Bauer was well-known on the Emmitsburg campus. The Rev. James Donohue, a Mount St. Mary's professor who celebrated the funeral Mass for Bauer yesterday at the Church of the Immaculate Conception, remembered seeing the team lope past him "like gazelles" on their morning practice runs - there one minute, gone the next but for the last sight of Bauer's bobbing blond head.

This past week, his beloved basketball team's fortunes were intertwined with his misfortune.

Bauer took a tumble in a stairwell a week ago Sunday, and team members learned of the accident before their game against Robert Morris in the Northeast Conference semifinals. Mount St. Mary's won an upset victory, moving on to the final game.

On Wednesday, the team headed into the game against Sacred Heart as Bauer, at Shock Trauma, remained on life support with little hope of recovery. In the stands, students waved signs encouraging players to win the game for Bauer. The team did win - the game, the conference title, a berth in the NCAA tournament - as fans chanted Bauer's name.

Soon thereafter, back in Baltimore, Bauer, who grew up in Lutherville and graduated from Calvert Hall College High School, was taken off life support. He died shortly after midnight Thursday.

On Thursday, the campus and Emmitsburg celebrated the team's return. In small-town fashion, the local fire company paraded the victors home to campus. According to news reports, Bauer's family visited Friday with the basketball team, which gave them a championship banner.

For all the hoopla, it's been a "solemn" week on campus, said Pete McGaughran, 20, a friend of Bauer who attended his funeral Mass yesterday.

"It's just been tough," McGaughran said. "He was always a big supporter of the basketball team."

McGaughran was on the track team with Bauer for the past three years and sat with him in a criminal justice class they shared. Bauer was to graduate in May, with a double major in sociology and criminal justice.

Now, as players and fans look forward to tonight's game, the student who could be counted on to cheer the team remains on their minds.

"He was one of the committed few, even when we were struggling," Gerick said.

Tonight's game is the Mount's first appearance in March Madness since 1999, and the school is hoping to continue its remarkable end-of-the-season run for as long as possible.

"I am so excited for the basketball team and the student body already," Donohue, who had Bauer in two of his classes, said yesterday afternoon. "If we were to win, it would be a shot in the arm. And if not, well, we will marshal on."

Either way, it will be a bittersweet ending.

"As the president [Thomas H. Powell] said, it's been a week of pride and pain," said Mount St. Mary's spokeswoman Linda Sherman. "We look at this game and are saying we hope this helps us heal. It's really been a tumultuous week."

jean.marbella@baltsun.com