Ohio plays Brown in new tourney's first round
March 17, 2008
The season’s not over for the Ohio Bobcats men’s team. Early Monday morning, the fledgling College Basketball Invitational released its brackets, which include Ohio playing Brown Tuesday in Athens in the first round.
The single-elimination tournament features 16 teams that failed to qualify for the prestigious NCAA men’s tournament or the “kissing your sister” National Invitational Tournament (NIT). The good news is that the drop-off in prestige between the NIT and the CBI is not nearly as steep as between the NCAA and the NIT.
Late Sunday, the Gazelle Group, which owns the CBI, had still not posted its brackets, and a diligent search of sports Web sites failed to turn up any mention of the tournament match-ups before midnight. Not surprisingly, sports and basketball pages were overrun with news about NCAA Selection Sunday.
The Bobcats, 19-12, play Brown, 19-9, in the Convocation Center at 7 p.m. Tuesday. Tickets are $10 apiece and will be sold first-come, first-served. Students will be admitted free at the student gate with an OU ID.
Brown, which reportedly is coached by Craig Robinson, Barack Obama's brother-in-law, placed second in the Ivy League Conference, with an 11-3 conference record.
Other teams in the CBI tournament include Miami (of Ohio), Cincinnati, Richmond, Houston, Nevada, Virginia, Rider, Old Dominion, Bradley, Valparaiso, Washington, Tulsa, Utah and UTEP,
The tournament runs Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, with quarterfinals next Monday, semifinals next Wednesday, and a three-game championship series March 31, April 2 and April 4 (if necessary). All games will be at campus sites.
The winner of the first-round Ohio-Brown game will face the winner of Bradley-Cincinnati on Monday, March 24 at a site and time to be determined.
According to OU sports information, Ohio's last post-season appearance was the first round of the 2005 NCAA Tournament when the 13th-seeded Bobcats lost to fourth-seeded Florida 67-62 in Nashville, Tenn. after a 20-point second-half comeback. Ohio's last post-season win was the 1995 National Invitation Tournament when the Bobcats knocked off George Washington 83-71 in the Convo before falling 66-62 at Iowa in the second round.
Brown coach Robinson's team established a new school-record for victories with a 19-9 record, posting a winning percentage of .678, the best at Brown since 1945. The 19 victories shattered the previous mark of 17 wins by Brown teams in 1974, 2003 and 2005.
Robinson's squad also captured 10 of the last 11 games to finish the regular season.
Brown’s historic season was headlined by senior 1,000-point scorers Mark McAndrew and Damon Huffman, who earned first team All-Ivy honors, and junior Chris Skrelja, a second team All-Ivy selection.
Fox College Sports Television owns the broadcast rights for the CBI, and both audio and video will be streamed. The Web address for the streaming coverage is located at the Gazelle/CBI Web site: www.gazellegroup.com/cbi/index_main.htm
The Gazelle Group, based in Princeton, N.J., runs the 2K Sports College Hoop Classic that benefits Coaches vs. Cancer and the O'Reilly Auto Parts CBE Classic.
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