[ DIVISION II SPORTS ]
Hawaii's small colleges beat NCAA Division I schools four times last year, their most successful season since they began hosting tournaments involving the big boys. Ruling puts D-II
tourneys in dangerBYUH and HPU now must scramble
to fill because of lost exemptionsBy Jerry Campany
jcampany@starbulletin.comThis year, some of them might not get a chance to improve upon it.
Federal judge Edmund Sargus of Columbus, Ohio, denied a motion for a preliminary injunction against the "2-in-4 rule" Friday, dealing a blow that could kill more than one of Hawaii's five Division I basketball tournaments hosted by Division II teams this year.
Sargus upheld the rule, which the NCAA instituted to limit college basketball teams to two appearances in four seasons in exempted tournaments like the Maui Invitational and Great Alaska Shootout, to see if lesser tournaments like Brigham Young-Hawaii's Paradise Jam Hawaii and Hawaii Pacific's Thanksgiving Classic would be able to survive for another year without help.
Early reaction is that they will not.
"It's not good, that's for sure," Brigham Young-Hawaii coach Ken Wagner said. "It will be hard to fill an eight-team tourney, we were hoping for any of the other options. I had a whole list of teams that would come if this hadn't have happened."
Wagner's Seasiders seem to be put in the worst position by the ruling, as nearly all of the teams they had committed for their December tournament have no exemptions left, giving them just over a month to woo enough teams to Laie.
Wagner turned over management of his tournament, which was called the Yahoo! Invitational last season, to Paradise Jam this year and has not decided on a course of action yet, but is considering dropping it down to a four-team affair if not dropping it for a year altogether.
Hawaii Pacific's tournament is in danger as well, leading Lee Frederick of Milwaukee-based Sport Tours International, which runs HPU's tournament, to tell CBS Sportsline after the ruling that it is dead because of the decision. After gauging interest from teams 12 hours later, he says he is committed to trying to make the tourney work even if he has to cut the field in half. But it won't be easy.
"Of course we want to have a tournament," Frederick said. "But I think my chances are no more than 50-50 (of filling out a field) this year."
Frederick has three teams -- Auburn, Cal-Irvine and HPU -- committed for the Thanksgiving tournament and needs one more to keep it alive.
Sports Tours International was part of the group of promoters that brought the issue to the courts, suing the NCAA in an attempt to get the rule overturned. The ruling opens the door for STI to go back to court in a year to show the judge that his ruling did indeed cause tournaments to fold. In his ruling, Sargus said he wanted a year for the plaintiffs to prove "some cognizable danger of violation of the type the antitrust laws are designed to prevent."
Hawaii's other two small college tournaments are not as affected by the ruling.
The eight-team field for Chaminade's Maui Invitational is set for this year as well as next and has an ESPN contract that makes it attractive enough for teams to save exemptions just to play.
Hawaii-Hilo's tournament is downsizing from eight to four teams and will not go after the big-name teams it has in the past, but Hilo coach Jeff Law says those moves have been in the works since long before the ruling.
"It keeps things status quo for us," Law said. "We went from eight to four teams because the pool was so shallow before this ruling, now it will become that much more shallow. We made a determination when Kathy (McNally, Hilo's athletics director) got here that we wanted to come out instead of pampering and babying big-name teams, just getting the teams that want to come here anyway, even if they are smaller.
"Any D-I team is a decent team on our schedule, we don't have to play the RPI game like they do in Manoa."
HPU Sports BYUH Athletics