The University of Hawai‘i men’s basketball team is not scheduled for any nationally televised games, but will host UC Irvine for a non-conference matchup Feb. 21 starting at 7:05 p.m. Pairings for the ESPNU BracketBusters event were announced Monday with
The University of Hawai‘i men’s basketball team is not scheduled for any nationally televised games, but will host UC Irvine for a non-conference matchup Feb. 21 starting at 7:05 p.m.
Pairings for the ESPNU BracketBusters event were announced Monday with three Western Athletic Conference schools — Boise State, Nevada and Utah State — slotted for nationally-televised games, states a Hawai‘i release.
This is the third straight year that Hawai‘i has been matched against a team from the Big West Conference as part of the BracketBusters pool.
The Rainbows won at Long Beach State in 2007 and lost at UC Riverside in 2008. Hawai‘i is 3-3 all-time in the event and has hosted on two other occasions, falling to Wisconsin-Milwauke in 2005 and defeating Santa Clara in 2006.
UC Irvine is currently 7-14 overall and tied for fifth place in the Big West with a 4-4 mark. This will be the fifth all-time meeting between the teams and the first since 1984.
As part of the ESPNU BracketBusters format, the Rainbow Warriors will play a return game at UC Irvine during the 2009-10 season.
The seventh annual ESPNU BracketBusters event is a two-day men’s college basketball extravaganza pitting potential NCAA Tournament hopefuls against each other.
Each conference selected its participating teams before the season and the matchups for the event were determined by ESPN in conjunction with the conferences.
The event features 13 nationally televised games on either ESPN2, ESPNU or ESPN360.com selected from a pool of 102 teams.
This year’s ESPNU BracketBusters pool features teams with 77 appearances in the last five NCAA Tournaments including a team in the Final Four — George Mason (2006); one in the Elite Eight — Davidson (2008); and six Sweet Sixteen teams — Butler (2007), Southern Illinois (2007), Bradley (2006), Wichita State (2006), UW-Milwaukee (2005) and Nevada (2004).
