The First Four that opens the NCAA Tournament this week in Dayton, Ohio includes a program famous for knocking off a top seed, one team that has never won in the Big Dance, another which is approaching a 40-year NCAA Tournament win drought and one school that practically has a home game.
That latter team, Miami (Ohio), faced great scrutiny before Sunday’s reveal of the brackets because the previously unbeaten RedHawks (31-1) had lost in the Mid-American Conference tournament quarterfinals and missed out on the automatic bid. Instead, the MAC got in both tournament winner Akron and Miami, the regular-season champion.
The RedHawks play fellow No. 11 seed SMU (20-13) in the late game on Wednesday, with the winner traveling to Philadelphia to face sixth-seeded Tennessee in the first round of the Midwest Region.
“Obviously, very excited to be selected as an at-large team,” Miami head coach Travis Steele said. “Huge honor — happy for our guys.
“It’s going to be a great environment,” Steele said in reference to Dayton being about 40 miles from Miami’s campus in Oxford, Ohio. “Hopefully … the RedHawk nation will be showing up there on Wednesday night to support us.
“I’m sure they will; it will be a home game for us.”
SMU last played in the NCAA Tournament in 2017 and its most recent win was in 1988.
UMBC, which faces Howard in the early Tuesday game, has one NCAA Tournament win in its history, and it was a shocker. The Retrievers ousted top-seeded Virginia 74-54 in 2018, which was the last time UMBC made the NCAA Tournament. Before that game, No. 16 seeds were 0-135 against No. 1 seeds in tournament history.
Howard (23-10), the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference winner, has never won. The winner between the Bison and America East champion UMBC (24-8) advances to play No. 1 seed Michigan on Thursday in the Midwest Region in Buffalo, N.Y.
Prairie View A&M (18-17), the Southwestern Athletic Conference representative, has never won in the tournament in two previous bids, the most recent in 2019. The Panthers face Patriot League champion Lehigh (18-16) in Wednesday’s early game, with the winner playing South Region No. 1 seed Florida on Friday in Tampa.
Power conference programs North Carolina State (20-13) and Texas (18-14) will determine, in the Tuesday nightcap, the 11th seed in the West Region and the opponent on Thursday for sixth-seeded BYU in Portland, Ore.
The Wolfpack and Longhorns played earlier this season at the Maui Invitational, with Texas winning 102-97 on Nov. 26.
–Field Level Media
