Feb. 15, 2012
By Gregg Bell SEATTLE - Huskies basketball will be attacking another cross-continent, power-packed non-conference schedule next season. Washington will be grouped with Final Four-entrant and Big Ten power Ohio State, Big East contender Seton Hall and Rhode Island of the Atlantic 10 at the 2012 Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Tip-off Tournament in the opening weeks of next season. The eight-team, two-bracket tournament is Nov. 16-18 at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn., about 70 miles from the "birthplace of basketball," the Naismith Hall of Fame. The Huskies spent the first week of December in New York for megawatt games earlier this season at Madison Square Garden against Marquette in the Jimmy V Classic and Duke in the Carquest Classic. They visited Times Square, the national 9/11 Memorial, the production set of a television series, and attended Broadway shows that week. In November 2010, UW joined eventual national-champion Connecticut, Kentucky, Michigan State and others in the prestigious and ultra-competitive Maui Classic during Thanksgiving week. "(UW assistant) Coach Jim Shaw has done a great job of trying to get us in one of the premier tournaments every year. And this certainly falls into that category," Huskies coach Lorenzo Romar said of the Naismith Hall of Fame Tip-off Tournament, which Kentucky won three months ago. "We are privileged and honored to be selected as a participant in the Hall of Fame Tournament. The New York experience was great -- we got to do a lot of things away from basketball. When we went to the CBE Classic (in Kansas City, Mo.) a few years ago, we got to see the NCAA Hall of Fame. "Now, to be able to see and experience the Naismith Hall of Fame is something that may be our players' only opportunity to ever see it. I'm already excited!" Washington is 8-3 all-time against Ohio State, including 0-1 on a neutral court and 6-0 in Seattle. The Huskies last played the Buckeyes on Dec. 1, 1972, at Hec Edmundson Pavilion to open the '72-73 season. UW has never faced Seton Hall or Rhode Island in men's basketball. This will be the first time the Huskies have played a game in the state of Connecticut. All three games Washington has played with UConn have been on neutral floors, including twice in the NCAA tournament. The Naismith Hall of Fame Tip-off Tournament recently changed to a format that now features two, four-team brackets that don't play each other in Connecticut. UW, Ohio State, Seton Hall and Rhode Island will be in the 2012 Naismith bracket. The separate, Springfield bracket will include Albany, Loyola, Md., the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Norfolk State. The Hall of Fame Tip-off Tournament also recently changed locations from the quarter century spent played in Springfield, Mass., home of the Naismith Hall of Fame, to the 12,000-seat Mohegan Sun arena in southeastern Connecticut that is part of an entertainment complex owned by the Mohegan Tribe. The Huskies will host two "campus-round" games earlier in November in conjunction with the tournament, against teams from the Springfield bracket. Dates and times for those games at Alaska Airlines Arena plus for the games in Connecticut will be announced later. The tournament said Wednesday that tickets for its 2012 event at the Mohegan Sun will go on sale "in the near future." For this season's tournament, participating schools were granted a pre-sale window beginning in late April, with general-public sales beginning in late July. Go to http://www.halloffametipoff.com for more information. |
