Quick glance at UW's NIT game against Texas-Arlington

[Ron Newberry]

Here is a University of Washington release about the Huskies' NIT game against Texas-Arlington Tuesday night in Seattle:

Pac-12 Regular Season Champion Huskies Earn No. 1 NIT Seed

Washington hosts UT-Arlington of the Southland Conference on Tuesday at 7:00 p.m.

SEATTLE - The Washington Huskies (24-10, 14-4), winners of the Pac-12 Conference regular season title, are a No. 1 seed in the National Invitation Tournament and will host UT Arlington (24-8, 15-1 Southland Conference) on Tuesday, March 13 at 7:00 p.m (ESPNU).

The winner of Washington-UT Arlington will face either Northwestern or Akron in the second round on March 15-19. Tuesday's game is the first time the Huskies and Mavericks will be pitted against each other.

Washington was one of four No. 1 seeds selected to play in the 32-team NIT. The first three rounds will be played at home sites with the semifinals and finals being contested in New York's Madison Square Garden March 27 and 29.

Three other teams from the Pac-12 Conference earned spots in the tournament. Arizona is also a one seed, while Stanford and Oregon are No. 3 seeds. The Huskies and Ducks could potentially meet in the third rounds with a trip to New York on the line.

Washington will be making its first appearance in the NIT since 1997 and its sixth overall trip to the post-season tournament. The Huskies also played in the 1996, 1987, 1982 and 1980 NIT and have compiled a 3-5 overall record.

The Huskies have only hosted two games and are 1-1 in those home contests. They last hosted a game on March 16, 1987 when the beat Boise State 73-68 before losing on the road in the third round to Nebraska in Lincoln. The only other home game they hosted was a 1982 second round contest that they dropped 69-65 to Texas A&M.

The Mavericks won the Southland Conference regular season crown with a 15-1 record but lost 92-72 in the semifinals of their conference tournament to McNeese State. UT Arlington, who earned an automatic NIT bid by virtue of winning the regular season title, is led by sixth-year Coach Scott Cross. LaMarcus Reed, a 6-foot-5 senior forward, is the team's leading scorer with 17.8 points per game.

The Mavericks are moving over to the Western Athletic Conference on July 1, 2012.

Tickets for Tuesday's game at Alaska Airlines Arena go on sale to season ticket holders tonight online only. The season ticket holder priority deadline to order is 4:30 p.m. on Monday. Tickets for non-season ticket holders go on sale to the public Monday morning at 9 a.m. Unsold season ticket locations will go on sale to the public Tuesday morning.

Tickets prices are:
Chairbacks (rows1-20): $35
Bleachers w/ backs (rows 21-26): $30
Bleachers without backs (rows 27-31): $20

 

[lukese7]

Redemption Time

In most high school, college and professional sports, when a team fails in an attempt to make post-season play, their season is usually over. But with Division I college basketball in particular, many teams that don’t make the Big Dance each year have other opportunities to keep on playing, providing them with a sense of closure and possibly redemption.
After the Washington Huskies men’s basketball team lost to Oregon State 86-84 last Thursday in the second round of the Pac-12 conference tournament, the Dawg’s previously bright hope of making the NCAA tournament after winning the Pac-12 conference outright was suddenly hanging by a nylon thread. Players were stunned. Fans were upset. And the tournament selection committee was unforgiving, excluding the Huskies from the tournament, solidifying their season as a failure. All the talent in the world and a Pac-12 regular season championship didn’t matter anymore without that tournament bid.
“You're upset. You're mad. You're sad,” senior forward Darnell Gant said during the Huskies press conference yesterday afternoon.
Now the Huskies are in a situation that many teams that just weren’t good enough to dance find themselves in: Playing in the National Invitation Tournament.
Hearing the letters N, I, and T consecutively comes with a bit of sourness for college basketball players, coaches, and fans. While many teams are happy to be in the tournament, no team like the Huskies?with their pro prospects and major conference standing?ever WANTS to play in the NIT. Sure, your team might get to play a few more games, and winning the tournament would be a nice consolation prize. But having an NIT Champions banner hanging from your stadium rafters is a constant reminder that your team was good, but just not good enough to make the NCAA tourney.
For these Huskies though, they should go into the NIT with the belief that they are playing for an NCAA Championship, and it sure seems like they are.
“We're going to treat this like it's the National Championship,” freshman guard Tony Wroten Jr. said during the Huskies press conference.
And they should.
This is the team’s shot at redemption. Not just for the upset fans, (many of whom angrily?and in my opinion irrationally?tweeted Wroten, calling him pathetic and weak, after he missed four straight free throws at the end of regulation the to seal the win for OSU last week) but for themselves. This team had high expectations for itself coming into this season, but failed to reach their goal. Now they are in a situation where they can prove to themselves that they deserved to be in the NCAA tournament by winning the NIT Championship.
The Huskies are a No. 1 seed. They play No. 8 seed Texas-Arlington in the first round of the NIT tonight at 7 p.m. at Hec-Ed Pavilion, and will probably host a few more games given they win. As a No. 1 seed, and one of a few NCAA tournament snubs in the NIT, this is the Dawg’s tournament to lose. There are other good teams, but if Washington plays to their potential, they are the best team in the tournament.
Husky players are saying that they aren’t playing for redemption and that they aren’t out to prove they should have been included in the NCAA tournament. But I disagree. If they hoist that NIT Championship banner at the end of the season, it won’t be looked at by fans and players as a season that could have been. It will be looked at as a season that maybe should have resulted in an NCAA tournament birth, but instead ended with a team redeeming itself, pulling together despite an unfavorable circumstance, and giving themselves something to be proud of at seasons-end.
For the Huskies, this is their National Championship.