NAIA Hoop Tourneys Tip Off Wednesday
PORTLAND, Ore. – Five men’s and women’s basketball programs from the Cascade Collegiate Conference begin their quests for NAIA national championships this week – the men in Point Lookout, Mo., and the women in Sioux City, Iowa.
All games except for the championship contests will be streamed live over the Internet. Three different subscription plans will be available for tournament coverage. Users may purchase the All-NAIA pass, which includes every NAIA basketball tournament game offered on JumpTV for $39.95. Any of the tournaments may be purchased separately for $24.95 and any single game may be purchased for $7.95. Fans may purchase a subscription plan by visiting www.watchnaia.com.
On the men’s side, action gets underway with eight games on Wednesday, including matchups involving a pair of CCC teams. Warner Pacific, 22-10 and the CCC’s tournament champion, takes on ninth-seeded Bethel College at 11:45 a.m. PT. Bethel, 27-6 overall, won the Mid Central College Tournament title.
Regular season CCC champion Eastern Oregon (25-5) is seeded seventh and will open against Edwards Waters (Fla.) Wednesday at 3:45 p.m. PT. Edward Waters is 20-11 overall and captured the Florida Sun tournament championship. The Mountaineers, ranked fifth in the final poll of the season, are making the school’s first trip to the NAIA national tournament.
Oregon Tech, which is 26-6 overall, earned an at-large bid to the tournament. The Owls, seeded 11th, take on Mount Vernon Nazarene (Ohio) Thursday at 5:30 p.m. PT. Mt. Vernon Nazarene, also an at-large entrant, is 23-7 overall.
Cascade Collegiate Conference regular season co-champions Eastern Oregon and Southern Oregon will represent the CCC in the 32-team NAIA Division II women’s basketball national championship field which also begins Wednesday. EOU and SOU captured the two automatic bids from the CCC.
In first-round games, SOU (29-4) plays St. Ambrose (28-5) Wednesday at 7:45 p.m. PT, while EOU (24-5) plays Cardinal Stritch (26-4) Thursday at 7:15 p.m. PT.