Leatherneck Nation

They will play in western hall on the 17th.

#4 Western will be playing #5 SIU-Carbondale at Western Hall on Thursday. Game time is 7PM.

The winner will play the winner of Northern Kentucky vs University of South Carolina Upstate.

Western is on Spring Break this week. So the students are out of town.

Interesting...not one I was familiar with.
WBI is Women's Basketball Invitational: http://www.womensbasketballinvitational ... ding/index
The bracket is available here: http://static.psbin.com/k/2/ofcfttymniv ... acket_.pdf

Looks like they take a total of 16 teams, seed each side of the bracket 1-8, and then do a standard tournament setup.
4th seed Western will be taking on 5th seed Southern Illinois at 7 PM on Thursday the 17th.

EDIT - and as I was thinking about if I should go and play in the pep band, I realized that they're on spring break...then realized that that means that all the students are on spring break and there's going to be like 50 people in the stands. Oh well...at least it's some kind of post-season.

[tweet]709566605144035329[/tweet]

ST_Lawson wrote:I was thinking about if I should go and play in the pep band, I realized that they're on spring break

That just means you get to be a trombone soloist for the National Anthem

ST_Lawson wrote:Interesting...not one I was familiar with.
WBI is Women's Basketball Invitational: http://www.womensbasketballinvitational ... ding/index
The bracket is available here: http://static.psbin.com/k/2/ofcfttymniv ... acket_.pdf

Looks like they take a total of 16 teams, seed each side of the bracket 1-8, and then do a standard tournament setup.
4th seed Western will be taking on 5th seed Southern Illinois at 7 PM on Thursday the 17th.

EDIT - and as I was thinking about if I should go and play in the pep band, I realized that they're on spring break...then realized that that means that all the students are on spring break and there's going to be like 50 people in the stands. Oh well...at least it's some kind of post-season.

[tweet]709566605144035329[/tweet]

It's not like the students come out and support them anyways unless there athletes themselves.

Marching On: WIU women's basketball earns spot in WBI

Here's the story as seen on WGEM Sports with Ben Marth:
http://www.wgem.com/story/31469336/2016 ... pot-in-wbi

Good to see them get recognized. Is this one of those " pay to play" post season tourney's, where the school foots a lot of the bill?

Just looked at the site, and see that schools do receive monies from the WBI, and get to keep revenue at their home game. Good for the ladies.

It is interesting to see that the SIUC Women's team is in this tournament.

The SIUC Men's team chose not to participate in a tournament because of the current financial environment: hotel and meal costs for the team, band, cheerleaders, managers, and administrators.

The SIUC Men finished tied for 4th in the MVC with a 11-7 record (22-10). They would have certainly been in the running for a spot in the CBI, CIT, or the new 16-team Vegas Invitational.

Illinois State Men finished tied with Evansville for 2nd in the MVC. They also chose not to participate in a post-season tournament.

I wonder if they made a point of trying to seed teams more "regionally" rather than just specifically how good they were. Western ends up with a home game, Southern gets a bus trip upstate.
Winner will likely travel to Northern Kentucky...6 hours on a bus for Western or 5 hours for Southern. I know that usually the cutoff is 5 hours, for driving vs flying, but they may make an exception this time. I'd imagine a charter bus would be cheaper than a flight to the Cincinnati area.