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UH has WAC company
in Bracket Busters

Busting Brackets Hawaii will participate in ESPN's Bracket Busters Saturday for the third year in a row. Yr Opponent Result '03 at Kent State W, 79-78 '04 at So. Illinois L, 62-66 '05 To be determined

Bracket Busters Saturday won't put as big a burden on the Hawaii basketball team's travel budget this season as it has the last two years.

The Rainbow Warriors were willing to go the extra mile in the event's first two years, traveling to the Midwest in the middle of the Western Athletic Conference season in pursuit of national television exposure. This year, if the 'Bows can put together a solid record, the national coverage will come to them.

UH will host a Bracket Busters Saturday game on Feb. 19 and hopes to attract one of 11 games to be televised nationally by ESPN and its affiliates.

All 10 Western Athletic Conference teams are among the 64 teams involved in this year's event, up from 46 last year. Six games will be televised nationally on ESPN and ESPN2, the other five will be produced by ESPN Regional Television and will be available nationally on ESPN Full Court, a pay-per-view service.

"For the WAC and all the teams that are in there, it's good exposure at the time of year where you need it," UH coach Riley Wallace said. "If you're good, it's going to show."

The Bracket Busters event was started two years ago to highlight so-called mid-major conferences. Thirteen conferences are represented in this year's event. All but three WAC teams -- San Jose State, Southern Methodist and Texas El-Paso -- will have home games.

The Rainbows are 1-1 in Bracket Busters games. They won at Kent State in 2003 and lost at Southern Illinois last season.

Both of the nationally televised games required a sizable detour during WAC road trips for the Rainbows. With UH hosting a game this year, another team will bear the travel burden.

"As time goes on and we march toward late January ... we'll have a clearer idea of a smaller pool of teams that might be heading to Hawaii," said Jon LeCrone, commissioner of the Horizon League, in a teleconference yesterday. "We've actually already begun talking about how we want to manage that piece of it from a travel perspective."

Said Wallace: "It's tough to play here, as long as we keep good players it's going to be that way. And the trip is definitely to our advantage, there's no question abut that. But that was the same thing we had to see the last two years going to Kent State and down to Southern Illinois."

The pairings for the 32 games will be announced on Jan. 30. Burke Magnus, ESPN's director of programming and acquisitions, said power ratings will be incorporated in the selection process. But creating attractive matchups for television purposes is often the deciding factor.

"Our goal is to try to put the best teams together regardless of geography," Magnus said.

"It just so happened the last two years (the Rainbows) were very good and being able to put them together with Kent (State) two years ago and with Southern Illinois last year, that was our goal. ... They didn't hesitate to go the extra yard for us."

The event includes agreements for return games the following season. Southern Illinois plays at UH in a nonconference game on Nov. 29 as a return for UH's trip to Carbondale, Ill., last season.