BRISTOL, Conn. — UTSA will participate in the 10th annual Sears BracketBusters, a three-day men’s college basketball event pitting potential NCAA Championship hopefuls against each other, this season, as announced by ESPN on Wednesday.
The games will be played from Feb. 17-19 and 13 matchups will be televised on the ESPN family of networks (ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU/ESPN3).
The NCAA Tournament hopefuls will be selected from a pool of 142 teams from 16 conferences, the largest in the event’s history. Two teams from last year — Butler and VCU — reached the 2011 Final Four in Houston.
All 12 Southland Conference teams will participate this season. League teams with home games will be McNeese State, Nicholls, Northwestern State, Sam Houston State, Southeastern Louisiana and Stephen F. Austin. UTSA and the other five schools — Central Arkansas, Lamar, UT Arlington, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and Texas State — will play road games.
For the seventh consecutive year, ESPNU will feature five Sears BracketBusters games, while ESPN or ESPN2 will televise up to six and ESPN3 will carry two. The dates and times of the 13 televised matchups will be announced on Monday, Jan. 30. The television matchups are selected by ESPN, while a committee of conference commissioners determines the additional non-televised games.
Sears BracketBusters will provide the 26 televised teams an opportunity to play other top non-conference opponents three weeks before Selection Sunday. The 116 teams not selected will compete against one another during the same three-day span.
The 142-team field will feature teams from 16 conferences: 12 each from Colonial Athletic Association, Mid-American Conference and Southland; 11 each from Ohio Valley Conference and Big South; 10 each from Horizon League, Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, Missouri Valley and Summit League; nine each from America East, Big Sky and Big West; eight from the Western Athletic Conference; four from the Southern Conference; three from the MEAC; and two from the West Coast Conference.
Squads participating in this season's event have produced 87 appearances in the last six NCAA Championships.
Three Southland programs — Northwestern State, Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston State — previously have participated in four BracketBusters contests.
