---

Rainbows are 1 of 100 schools in Bracket Busters Saturday

The Hawaii basketball team will have a lot more company in the pool of teams vying for berths in ESPN's Bracket Busters Saturday in February.

This season's event will include 100 schools representing 18 conferences, with 22 selected to play in nationally televised Bracket Busters games on Feb. 18. The matchups will be determined on Jan. 29.

Six of the 11 games will be split between ESPN and ESPN2, and the other five will appear on ESPNU. Teams not selected for the Bracket Busters Saturday package will be paired up in nonconference contests.

Hawaii has been designated as a home team for the second straight year. The Rainbow Warriors' participation in Bracket Busters resulted in national television appearances in each of the event's first three years.

UH won at Kent State in the inaugural event in 2003, lost at Southern Illinois in 2004 and lost to Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which went on to reach the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament, last season at the Stan Sheriff Center.

UH will visit UWM for a nonconference game on Dec. 10 as a payback for the Panthers' trip here in February.

All nine WAC schools are among the teams eligible for the Bracket Busters field.

Hawaii, Boise State, Nevada, San Jose State and Utah State will have home games. Fresno State, Idaho, Louisiana Tech and New Mexico State will have to go on the road.

The event started with 18 teams in 2003. The pool grew to 46 teams in 2004 and to 64 last season.

"Being on the NCAA men's basketball committee, I know we look at the 11 (ESPN and ESPN2) matchups and these are games and these are teams that are certainly on the radar screen for the NCAA Tournament," WAC commissioner Karl Benson said. "We believe it has provided teams avenues and platforms to improve their position in the last month of the season."

BSU's Tsuchida is WAC defensive player of week

Allison Tsuchida was named the Western Athletic Conference defensive player of the week for her efforts in soccer matches against Montana and Air Force last week.

The Boise State sophomore defender started both matches. She cleared away a potential match-tying goal in the 70th minute against Montana to help preserve a 1-0 victory last Friday.

Tsuchida, a Punahou graduate, anchored the defense in Sunday's 2-1 win over the Falcons. The only AFA goal came on a penalty kick.

The Broncos allowed a total of eight shots in the two matches.

Seasiders sweep Argonauts

Chuan Weng Yu put down a match-high 24 kills and Lilly Tufuga added 12 as the Seasiders swept Notre Dame de Namur 30-21, 30-15, 30-13 last night at the Cannon Activity Center.

Christina Bobik added 11 kills and hit .421 for the match as the Seasiders finished with a .346 hitting percentage. Marissa Miller's seven kills paced the Argonauts, who hit just .104.

Brigham Young-Hawaii slips notch in poll

Brigham Young-Hawaii dropped one notch in the National Collegiate Top 20 water polo poll this week.

The Seasiders are No. 17 after being No. 16 for the first two weeks of the poll. They were idle last week after losing twice to top-ranked UCLA to open the season.

Cal is No. 2, followed by USC, Stanford and Pepperdine.