I can't believe my old school has a chance to go to the big dance! Any other SHSU alums out there? Area college notebook: Sam Houston vies for lead By RICHARD DEAN It has been quite some time since Sam Houston State has been mentioned as a basketball school. The last winning season in men's basketball was 1986-87. That was five head coaches ago, before Bob Marlin arrived. In his second year in Huntsville, Marlin's Bearkats are 11-5 and for the second consecutive week playing for a share of the Southland Conference lead. A week after disposing of Stephen F. Austin, the Bearkats (5-2 in SLC) face Lamar (6-2 in SLC) at 7:45 p.m. Thursday in Huntsville. "We still have a long way to go but I like our chances to finish in the upper half of the conference," said Marlin, who coached Pensacola Junior College to the 1993 national championship. "We feel if we're on our game, we can beat anybody." The Bearkats are off to their best start since moving up to NCAA Division I in 1987-88 and early this season was ranked 68th among 319 Division I programs in the Sagarin rankings. New tournament format -- The Southland Conference postseason basketball tournament March 7-11 in Shreveport, La., will have a new format. For the first time since 1995 the CenturyTel Classic's top eight men's and women's teams will participate, expanding from a field of six. First-round games will be on campus sites March 7 with the top four seeded teams hosting. Men's semifinals are March 9 and women's semifinals March 10 at the Gold Dome. Both championships are March 11 with the men tipping off at noon and the women at 5 p.m. The winners receive an automatic berth in the NCAA Tournament. Tickets will be available in early February and can be purchased by calling 1-888-735-7524 or at any Southland Conference athletic ticket office. I would wet my pants!!!!!
Yeah, and when my alma mater SWT won the regular season last year, I thought they would go. Crazy crap happens in that conference tourney every year. I wouldn't buy those tickets just yet.
Yeah, they lost by 5 or so in the championship game. Their overall record was around 21-11, but didn't make the tourney, I didn't expect them to. There will never be 2 teams from the Southland in the Big Dance.
From what I understand, the winner of the tourney gets an automatic bid. Then what? Does the NCAA look at records of other teams and pick who else can go to round out the field? Is that what you ment by "There will never be 2 teams from the Southland in the Big Dance." I thought all the teams that go to the tourney are invited because they won their respective conference tourneys. But thinking about that again, I guess its not possible. There can't be 64 different tourneys huh? How is the field picked beyound the tourney winners?
They have a committe who selects the teams. If I remember corectly the committe is made up of athletic directors, former coaching legends (I believe Dean Smith is on it), League Directors, People Like that. ------------------ ~John~ The Bull Is Back!!
