Sunday, March 14, 2010

MACON, Ga. - ETSU learned it will head to New Orleans to take on top-seeded Kentucky on Thursday while Duke headlines the group of eight headed to Jacksonville for first-round play.

ETSU won the 2010 General Shale Brick Atlantic Sun Championship, its second consecutive title while Kentucky won both the regular-season and tournament titles in the Southeastern Conference. The Bucs and Wildcats have squared off twice, in 1981 and 1985 with Kentucky winning both meetings.

ETSU and the Atlantic Sun have enjoyed success over the last three years against the SEC. The Buccaneers own wins against Georgia and Arkansas in the span while the conference as a whole has picked up six wins against the SEC.

Jacksonville's home arena, the Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena will host first- and second-round games for the second time in five years. Jacksonville hosted in 2006 and witnessed a pair of Final Four schools, LSU and Florida, start its respective runs.

This year's quartet of games include Duke facing the winner of the opening-round game, Winthrop or Arkansas Pine Bluff. Louisville, out of the Big East, faces Pac-10 regular-season champion California. Three automatic qualifiers, Temple, Cornell and Wofford, plus Wisconsin, round out the eight bound for the River City.

The Jacksonville Dolphin basketball team will learn its NIT fate later tonight. Belmont and Campbell could also find themselves in postseason play, landing in either College Basketball Invitational (CBI) or the CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament.(CIT). Fields for those two tournaments will also be announced later Sunday night.

Last season, the conference sent three to postseason play (ETSU, NCAA; Jacksonville, NIT; Belmont, CIT), for only the third time in conference history (1988, 2004). Belmont advanced to the quarterfinals of the CIT and picked up the league's first postseason win since Georgia State's 2001 win in the NCAA Tournament.