TicketsMarch 13, 2006
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CINCINNATI, Ohio - Snubbed by the NCAA Tournament, the University of Cincinnati was selected as one of the four No. 1 seeds in the National Invitation Tournament.
The Bearcats, who will receive a first round bye, will begin play on Friday, Mar. 17 hosting the winner of the Charlotte-Georgia Southern game. Game time and ticket information will be determined on Monday.
No. 9 seed Charlotte (18-12), a former rival of UC in Conference USA, and Georgia Southern (20-9) will play at Charlotte on Mar. 14.
With a win on Friday, UC will advance to a Mar. 21 second round contest against either No. 4 Minnesota (15-14) or No. 5 Wake Forest (17-16), playing site to be determined. The quarterfinals, also on campus sites, will be played on Mar. 23. The finals move to Madison Square Garden on Mar. 28 and 30.
This will be Cincinnati's ninth appearance in the postseason NIT. The Bearcats have a 5-8 record in the tournament, finishing in third place in 1955. UC's last appearance in the postseason NIT occurred in 1991.
The NIT berth extends UC's streak of postseason tournament appearances to 17. The Bearcats' string of consecutive NCAA Tournament berths was snapped at 14, the third-longest active streak in the nation.
Head coach Andy Kennedy said that the Bearcats took the news that their NCAA streak had come to an end very hard. "Devastated. Completely devastated," the coach observed. "Granted, if we can hold (Gerry) McNamara for six seconds, we're not in this position. Ultimately, it's our fault - we didn't get enough done. I take full responsibility for that. I'm just terribly disappointed for these kids, who laid it on the line night in and night out. Especially for the seniors, this wasn't a fitting way for it to end."
"Sitting there today, I was 99.9 percent sure simply because I'm one of those guys that put a lot of thought to the process by which they say they use, which again is obviously rhetoric," Kennedy continued. "If you put the numbers up there, it just does not make sense. I would say that never in history of determining teams that get included in the NCAA tournament, a team with the strength of schedule at No. 6 as we sit here today, with a non-league schedule of 23 as we sit here today, and has gone 8-8 in the most powerful league has had to deal with what we've had to deal with."