'Bows' Bracket Buster foe is Southern Illinois
By Dayton Morinaga
Advertiser Staff Writer
University of Hawai'i men's basketball coach Riley Wallace is busting out the family for ESPN's Bracket Buster Saturday on Feb. 21.
ESPN announced the pairings for Bracket Buster yesterday, and the Rainbow Warriors were assigned to play at Southern Illinois in the marquee game of the one-day event.
Of the 23 games in this year's Bracket Buster, only the Hawai'i-SIU game will be televised on ESPN. Other games will be televised on ESPN2 or ESPN Regional Television.
"Once we started getting on ESPN consistently the last few years, our recruiting got better," Wallace said. "It's not an easy game, but as long as we're getting recognized, then it's a good thing."
It will also be a good thing for Wallace's family. He was raised in Jerseyville, Ill., which is around 100 miles away from SIU's home city of Carbondale.
"A lot of them are going to come out," he said. "They were already calling a couple weeks ago."
But there are a couple of bad things.
For one, Southern Illinois is 16-2 overall and alone in first place in the Missouri Valley Conference at 10-0. What's more, it is 35-1 in SIU Arena since the start of the 2001-02 season.
Southern Illinois gained national attention two seasons ago by advancing to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament.
"I don't know much about them, except that they're a good program and they have one of the toughest places to play in the country," Wallace said.
Wallace is also not pleased with the timing of the game.
The Bracket Buster will be sandwiched between WAC road games at Boise State on Feb. 18, and at Texas-El Paso on Feb. 23. Wallace is particularly concerned about the UTEP game.
In compliance with ESPN, the game at SIU will start at 11 p.m. Central (7 p.m. Hawai'i time). The game will end early Sunday morning, and the 'Bows must then make a flight to El Paso to prepare for an important WAC game against UTEP on Monday.
"We tried to move things around (with UTEP), but couldn't find anything," Wallace said.
In other Bracket Buster games involving WAC teams, Louisiana-Lafayette is at Rice, East Tennessee State is at Fresno State, Gonzaga is at Tulsa, and Toledo is at Nevada
Reach Dayton Morinaga at dmorinaga@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-8101.
