In the waning seconds of NC State’s ACC Tournament semifinal game against Virginia last March, Wolfpack guard Michael O’Connell found himself the poster boy for the concept of luck. At the game’s final buzzer, O’Connell hit a jumper that one broadcaster reflexively deemed a “lucky shot.” I’m not sure why, but in that moment, that common phrase struck me like a bolt of Malcolm Gladwell. For the first time, I asked myself, “Wait, what exactly is luck? Do I really believe in luck? Is luck even a thing?”

Since my epiphany, I’ve noticed how we all toss around the word luck without much thought as to what it really is, randomly crediting our triumphs to good luck while blaming our tribulations on rotten luck. The notion of luck is defined as success or failure coming about by chance, yet many folks seem to believe they can rig the system. Improving your luck is as simple as carrying around a rabbit’s foot, right? (Unless, of course, you’re the rabbit.)

Gladwell, author of Outliers: The Story of Success, asserts that all great achievements, from Mozart to Bill Gates, have been realized, at least in part, because of the resources available. Essentially, you must be lucky enough to be born in the right place at the right time to take advantage of your innate talent. But Gladwell also famously contends that one must invest 10,000 hours of training into something to earn the right to be among his expert outliers. Isn’t that a helluva lot of sweat equity to still be called lucky?

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To expand my study, I reached out to Wolfpack Coach Kevin Keatts, a man who conducted his own version of Gladwellian research in the days leading up to O’Connell’s shot.

Before the tournament, Keatts asked his players to bring along a good luck charm in hopes of exorcising the demons of a disappointing season. For his lucky talisman, Keatts brought a box of championship rings that he’d won over the years. O’Connell chose to wear a leather bracelet his mother had given him as a Christmas present.

All of this would underscore a series of events for Keatts and O’Connell that were undeniably improbable. After opening the tournament by improbably beating Louisville, Syracuse, and Duke, the Wolfpack trailed by three points with just five seconds remaining against Virginia. Cavaliers guard Isaac McKneely — one of the best free-throw shooters in the ACC — stood at the foul line, needing to make just one free throw to end NC State’s season.

Improbably, McKneely missed. Moments later, O’Connell’s 25-footer glanced off the backboard and rolled around the rim twice before — again, improbably — falling in at the buzzer. Following Keatts’s lucky charm gambit, his team improbably won nine games in a row to reach the NCAA Final Four.

“Is it luck or confidence? Whatever. We became the team we always thought we could be.”

Looking back, Keatts says he never even opened his box of lucky rings during his team’s postseason run, and the players never talked about their good luck charms. But after overcoming all that improbability, does Keatts now believe in luck? Nah. “As coaches today, we have to get very creative,” he says with a sly smile. “So I started thinking, Hey, this is something that might help us find a reason to be positive, and it flipped a switch in us. Is that luck or is that confidence? Whatever. We became the team we always thought we could be.”

Does Keatts view O’Connell’s shot as lucky? Nah. “I see it as a player making a play,” he says. It should be noted, however, that like many of his coaching brethren, Keatts is a creature of superstition who ate his lunches and dinners at the same restaurants in Washington, D.C., throughout the ACC Tournament; donned the same black Prada sneakers for every game there; and long maintained a ritual of wearing the same necktie for games until that tie “lost,” whereupon it would be dispatched to Goodwill.

O’Connell similarly does not embrace the idea that his shot was lucky because it undermines the role he played in the result. “When I look at good things that happen to me in life, luck is never the first thing that comes to mind,” O’Connell says, fidgeting with the leather bracelet on his wrist. “No pun intended, but the ball bounces your way sometimes and sometimes it doesn’t, and if I had missed that shot, it was probably because I shot it badly. I won’t say it was a lucky shot, because then what keeps you from saying that everybody’s success just comes down to luck?”

O’Connell does acknowledge that he’s been wearing his “lucky” bracelet every day since last year’s ACC Tournament, which he insists is merely a tribute to his mom.

Ultimately, both O’Connell and Keatts (and I, after much deliberation) believe that if luck does exist, it should be applied to improbable events that are totally out of our control, like the Powerball lottery or Isaac McKneely missing a free throw. We all agree on the basic theory first espoused by the Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca 2,000 years ago: Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Though I’d be remiss to overlook that Seneca was forced to take his own life in 65 AD based on allegations that he plotted to kill Emperor Nero — charges that were likely false and thus a fate that could be described as, well, unlucky.

Keep reading: The ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament has produced many unforgettable moments for hoops fans in our state. Here are some favorites from over the years.