Quest For Nit Title Takes WSU To Nebraska WSU Visits Athletic Cornhuskers On Tuesday
Washington State’s reward for Thursday night’s 92-73 win over Gonzaga in the first round of the National Invitation Tournament will be an expenses-paid trip to Lincoln, Neb.
The Cougars (17-11) were notified by NIT officials Friday morning that their second-round men’s basketball matchup against Nebraska (17-14) will be played Tuesday night at 5:05 (PST) in the 14,200-seat Devaney Center on the UN campus.
The winner of that game will advance to a quarterfinal against either Fresno State (21-10) or Michigan State (16-15) Friday night at a site to be determined. FSU and the Spartans play Tuesday night at Fresno, Calif.
As of Friday night, Tuesday’s WSU-Nebraska game was not scheduled to be televised.
WSU athletic director Rick Dickson had hoped the game might be played in the Spokane Arena, but the NIT decided to award a home game to the Cornhuskers (17-14), who knocked off Colorado State 91-83 in a first-round game played Thursday night in Fort Collins, Colo.
Nebraska, which finished 4-10 in the Big Eight Conference, has averaged 10,613 fans per game at home this season. The Cornhuskers started the year 15-4 but lost 10 of their last 11 regular-season games and were considered longshots to make the NIT’s 32-team field.
But they impressed WSU coach Kevin Eastman by venturing bravely into CSU’s Moby Arena and stealing away with a win over the Rams Thursday night.
“I don’t know if any of you’ve been to Moby Gym,” Eastman said after the Gonzaga game, “but that place gets loud - big-time loud. And if they had any size crowd, that was a tremendous win for Nebraska.”
Eastman, who was out of town recruiting Friday afternoon, said he knows little about Nebraska, except that coach Danny Nee has an NBA prospect in senior guard Erick Strickland, a 6-foot-3, 210-pounder averaging a team-high 14.3 points per game. Strickland had 19 in the win over CSU and was one of seven Huskers in double figures.
“We know they are basically a motion team and very, very athletic,” Eastman said. “They’re probably equal to or better, athletically, than the majority of the Pac-10 (teams), but that’s what Nebraska is known for in basketball circles. They get real strong-body kids, who are real athletic and they mix them with a couple of kids like Strickland. The reason he’s an NBA player is that he’s athletic and can shoot it.”
, DataTimes