Posted on: Friday, February 20, 2004
Bracket Buster win can boost 'Bows
| • | Southern Illinois eager to play UH |
| • | Rainbow Wahine roll past Boise State, 64-49 |
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist
Let's see now, a game 4,300 miles from home in front of a sold-out crowd against a Top-20 team that is 21-2 and has won 13 in a row.
It might not sound exactly like the Funk & Wagnalls' definition of a "golden opportunity" but that's what tomorrow's 7 p.m. ESPN Bracket Buster game at Southern Illinois amounts to for the University of Hawai'i men's basketball team.
After losing two of their last three games, the Rainbows are a team whose NCAA Tournament options are rapidly declining to the point where they are in desperate need of a jackpot victory.
Once upon a time, certainly before that pratfall against Louisiana Tech at the Stan Sheriff Center, the Rainbows were looking at several NCAA possibilities. But now, at 17-6 (9-4 in the Western Athletic Conference), their best chance — and only guarantee of returning to the Big Dance after a year's exile to the NIT — is to win the conference tournament in Fresno, Calif., in three weeks.
That's not impossible for a program that won back-to-back tournaments in Tulsa, but it is a desperate situation for a team that not so long ago was cruising along with higher hopes at 14-3.
This is, then, where the importance of tomorrow's Bracket Buster looms especially large for the Rainbows, who are front and center in a marquee matchup on national cable. Win it and, suddenly, the Rainbows have one foot, a big one, back in the at-large picture again.
"I think it could give them a big boost," said Burke Magnus, ESPN's director of basketball programming, a man behind the Bracket Buster concept. "I think in any other year the at-large hopes of a team like Hawai'i, with their profile in the WAC, you might be able to say fairly certainly they don't have an at-large shot. I think this year it might be a little bit different.
"I think this is a really significant game for them," Magnus said. "You're talking about not just SIU's Ratings Percentage Index (RPI), but they are a Top 25 team in the rankings, too."
When Bracket Buster was hatched last season, much of the event's appeal was in what it could do for the so-called mid-major teams by bolstering the RPI, a critical component in the NCAA selection process.
And, of all the teams UH could have drawn, SIU, while the most imposing, also brings the potential for the biggest reward.
The Salukis are ranked 20th in the Associated Press poll and carry a 23 RPI. That's no small inspiration for UH, which has no wins against teams ranked in the top 40 RPI and is very much in need of what the NCAA selection committee likes to call a "quality win."
At this point in the season that makes the game a 24-karat opportunity for the Rainbows.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.
