The alarm went off at 8:30 a.m.

Normally, a college student would not welcome getting up at such an ungodly hour on a Saturday. But this was no ordinary Saturday for a Terrier fan, and despite the two-overtime, 3 a.m. night before, the snooze button went untouched.

This was Saturday, March 15. The astute fan would have noticed weeks before that the possibility was there for a monumental day. The America East men’s basketball championship. The America East women’s basketball championship. The Hockey East Championship. All scheduled on the Ides of March. Clearly, some higher power was at work.

Of course, the teams still had to get there, and they all took vastly different paths.

The men’s hoopsters held serve as the top seed in their tournament downstairs from their home court, routing the University of New Hampshire in the quarters at Walter Brown Arena. BU then used the key contributions of Jason Grochowalski off the bench to come from behind and knock off Jose Juan Barea and Northeastern University to host the final in Case Gym.

The women were the third seed, and looked doomed in Hartford, facing a late second-half deficit to Northeastern in the quarterfinals. But they came back to eke past the Huskies on a Katie Meinhardt jumper, then beat second-seeded University of Vermont on Friday as the excitement mounted, snapping a 15-game losing streak to the Catamounts to reach their first conference final since 1990.

The Icedogs’ regular season troubles against Providence College dropped them out of home ice for the quarterfinals, and the fifth-seeded Terriers had to go on the road to face the Friars. After a Kenny Magowan hat trick led BU to a 5-4 win in the two teams’ fourth consecutive overtime game, the large scarlet and white contingent at Schneider Arena cheered the Icedogs to a 7-1 rout in game two, propelling the squad to the semifinals. It was already Saturday before the Terriers knew they would complete the trifecta later that day the second overtime against Boston College extended beyond midnight before Justin Maiser wound up and slapped the hat trick past Matti Kaltiainen to put the Eagles away.

So the stage was set for the biggest day in Terrier sports history. Could they do the unthinkable and take home the hardware three times?

Perhaps the biggest presence at a hopeful T. Anthony’s for breakfast that morning before the 11:00 men’s basketball tip (thanks to ESPN scheduling), was not even the still half-asleep hockey team, but Boston Globe sports columnist Bob Ryan. Ryan sat at a table alone, eating his omelette, proving that the eyes of the city were on Commonwealth Avenue.

With West Campus decked out in balloons, the optimism could be found in the festive atmosphere at Case. The first game of the day was the most promising for BU. The men were the defending America East Champions, the top seed, playing on their home court in front of a raucous sea of red, and even John Silber himself was in attendance.

But right off the opening tip, something wasn’t right about the game. The 16-2 start for second-seeded Vermont might have contributed to the uneasy feeling, and the eight-point halftime deficit didn’t help either. But the Terriers hung around and made their second-half run as ‘the Roof’ seemed about to come down.

But after a furious Terrier comeback fueled by Paul Seymour’s personal 11-0 run, David Hehn hit an impossible jumper and brought the large Vermont contingent onto the Terriers’ own home court to celebrate their first-ever NCAA Tournament berth, and the BU faithful were stunned in disbelief, 56-55.

‘I think that for whatever reason, we came out a little bit tight and got ourselves in a big hole at the beginning of the game,’ said BU men’s basketball head coach Dennis Wolff. ‘We were down 14 or 16 two minutes into the second half, then we were down one with the ball at the end. These guys have shown a lot of character I couldn’t have been prouder of the effort and determination that these guys showed.

‘It’s disappointing that we came up one point short. I don’t think it takes away at all from what any of the teams accomplished.’

Zero for one. A tough pill to swallow, but there was still hope. Two out of three ain’t bad, right?

Only the most hard-core Terrier fans made it down to Hartford for the 3:30 start of the women’s game. It didn’t seem likely that BU could pull off another upset. After shocking Vermont the day before, this time the task was tougher top-seeded University of Maine, which had gone undefeated in the conference during the regular season and featured America East Player of the Year Heather Ernest.

The rest of Terrier Nation caught the game on NESN. BU led, then continued to lead, and despite the Black Bear run that appeared inevitable, a Meinhardt three-point dagger from the baseline put the nail in the coffin on Maine and propelled the Terriers to their first-ever NCAA Tournament berth, 69-65.

One for two. The most likely team to win had lost, the most likely team to lose had won and now, who knew what to expect from the weary Icedogs at the FleetCenter?

But as the Section 8-ers boarded the trolleys to North Station, expectations were not high. While the Icedogs had slaved into the wee hours the night before, the New Hampshire Wildcats had been sleeping in their hotel rooms. Maybe Terrier fans were preparing themselves for the worst, but no one was counting on the Hockey East title.

But BU surprisingly came out full of energy in the first, unleashing a barrage on New Hampshire goalie Michael Ayers. Ayers weathered the storm and escaped unscathed, and it turned out that was about all he had to do.

‘It looked like we hit a wall about halfway through the second period,’ said BU hockey coach Jack Parker. ‘We didn’t have as many good chances; it seemed like we kind of tired out and were back on our heels. There was definitely some physical drain, but I think the mental drain was probably even more.

‘It’s tough to turn around after putting everything on the line against our archrival BC and play UNH the next night,’ Parker said.

With the Terrier attack weakened, the largely pro-New Hampshire crowd turned its attention to the other end, and BU goalie Sean Fields was ready for the spotlight. He had stood on his head in the third period and the overtimes against BC the night before, and he wasn’t done. He kept the scoreboard full of zeros, and when Kenny Magowan let one fly with less than two minutes to play, it appeared he might have done enough.

But Ayers’ skate tipped Magowan’s shot just wide, and for the Terriers to win in overtime their ninth period of hockey in less than 26 hours was too much to ask. Still, it took a fluke bounce off the stick of Ryan Whitney to beat Sean Fields, and the Terriers certainly had not gone down without a fight.

The same was true of the whole day. Despite a relatively unimpressive 1-2 record, the day will still go down in BU history.

‘It would have been a fantastic thing if all three teams had won,’ Wolff said, pointing out that the two losses were by one point and a stroke of luck in overtime. ‘And it was great for the women that they won.’

The women were clearly the heroes of the day, pulling off the unthinkable and emerging as the force that hockey and men’s basketball have already proven to be.

But just the situation the three teams had simultaneously gotten themselves into is an impressive achievement. And all three played on, as well, as the women got the automatic NCAA Tournament bid, the men got an NIT invite and the Icedogs got an at-large NCAA bid.

‘I think it was a pretty good feather in our caps that we had three winter sports competing for league championships, and competing at a high level,’ Parker added.

Such a coincidence in scheduling simply made more apparent the entire point: that Boston University sports are on the rise. Each of the three teams has consistently brought in big recruits, and with a reputable coach at each helm and a new building on its way up, things only appear to be getting better.

It might be a good idea to keep mid-March Saturdays open in 2004.