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Field changes for Las Vegas Invitational Tournament

TBSpyder

Graduate Assistant
Sep 24, 2011
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Hawaii dropped out of the field earlier. Apparently Sam Houston State and Liberty have as well. We should now get at least one decent home game out of it, as well, as still being in the Hosts division, with California, San Diego State, and West Virginia.

Bethune-Cookman remains in the Visitors field, the new Visitor teams, are East Carolina, Stetson, and a team to be announced. Would like to see East Carolina play at RC.
 
ECU at home would be great; however, it will be interesting to learn the identity of the final team.
 
It also appears the games in Vegas have been moved to Thur/Fri from Fri/Sat. Or am I imagining it was Fri/Sat to start out?
 
At one point it was a 9-team bracket somehow...I guess Arkansas-Little Rock dropped out as well?

http://www.foxsports.com/college-ba...nced-cal-west-virginia-richmond-hawaii-051515
Sloppy reporting. No way, could this have ever been a 9 team format, it wouldn't work with their format. I have not heard Arkansas-Little Rock, mentioned before. Maybe they're the 8th team. Whoever they add, it's not relevant to us, as we won't play them. I'd assume we'll play 2 of the 3 Eastern visitors at the RC, they are ECU (closest team to us), Stetson, and Bethune-Cookman.
 
Sloppy reporting. No way, could this have ever been a 9 team format, it wouldn't work with their format. I have not heard Arkansas-Little Rock, mentioned before. Maybe they're the 8th team. Whoever they add, it's not relevant to us, as we won't play them. I'd assume we'll play 2 of the 3 Eastern visitors at the RC, they are ECU (closest team to us), Stetson, and Bethune-Cookman.

That was a press release from the event organizers.
 
That was a press release from the event organizers.
Exactly, that's why I said it was sloppy reporting. Tell me, how each team can play two on campus games, and then 2 games in Las Vegas, with a 9 team field?
 
I don't think of press releases as "reporting".

If anybody should be able to get it right, it should be the organizers. The press release has been edited several times as teams have dropped out and been added. Maybe at one point we had an extra team filling in there for a single game or something...I don't know if that's permitted under exempt tournament rules.

Regardless, UALR isn't currently listed on the official site, so they seem to be out.
 
While ECU replaces Hawaii & Stetson replaces Liberty, I am not certain that Arkansas-Little Rock won't still be the one to replace Sam Houston.
 
As long as none of the hosts drop out or change - the home game we get will not really matter. Its going to be a bad game no matter what, but getting a good game or two out of it is what really matters.
 
I'll take ECU over Liberty any day. ECU has been bad the past couple of years, but at least being in the AAC it's kept their RPI around the 225 range. Nothing to hang our hat on , but much better than the usual fodder in the bottom 20 of the RPI we'd need to play in order to get the marquee games.
 
I hope we play ECU. Relative to the "lower tier" teams we play each year OOC, ECU would be one of the better of those teams. It can only benefit us to play as many strong teams as possible. Even with the easier games we schedule. West Virginia and either Cal/SDSU will be great for our RPI. We need to win one of two of those games as they will have the most impact for our RPI. Hopefully we win both!
 

Last season West Virginia was basically a better VCU. They were the best team in the nation at forcing turnovers and their game plan was to constantly apply pressure to force errors. Last season with Kendall we could beat this type of pressure pretty easily. It will be interesting to see how we fare against it this year with SDJ as the main ball handler.

There is a good chance that every team we will face at the invitational will be ranked at some point during the season. If we can go 1-1 I will be happy. If we come out 2-0 we will be ranked.
 
Last season West Virginia was basically a better VCU. They were the best team in the nation at forcing turnovers and their game plan was to constantly apply pressure to force errors. Last season with Kendall we could beat this type of pressure pretty easily. It will be interesting to see how we fare against it this year with SDJ as the main ball handler.

There is a good chance that every team we will face at the invitational will be ranked at some point during the season. If we can go 1-1 I will be happy. If we come out 2-0 we will be ranked.
You are right. Win those games and be ranked! Roll Spide!
 
We've been talking about it I[m waiting to see what kinds of packages might be available
 
We've been talking about it I[m waiting to see what kinds of packages might be available
You will be better off setting your own deal. I don't think UR will have any packages. There are some great deals at some of the hotels. I went ahead and set my own trip plans.
 
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