UW-Milwaukee Secures Hosting Rights for Men's Basketball Championship
Feb. 11, 2005
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With its 74-67 victory Thursday at Loyola, UW-Milwaukee secured the right to host the quarterfinals and semifinals of the 2005 Horizon League Men's Basketball Championship, which will be played March 4-5 at U.S. Cellular Arena in Milwaukee.
Although they have not clinched the regular-season title that normally includes hosting rights, the League-leading Panthers (18-5, 11-2) are guaranteed to host because second-place UW-Green Bay (16-6, 9-3) can not due to a facility conflict at the Resch Center in Green Bay even if the Phoenix would earn the regular-season title.
In addition, UW-Milwaukee owns the tiebreaker over third-place UIC (11-10, 6-5) by virtue of a season sweep of the Flames, who could, at best, tie the Panthers by winning their remaining five League games and having UWM lose its final three.
First-round games of the 2005 Horizon League Championship will be played Tuesday, March 1, and feature the fourth through ninth seeds on the campuses of seeds 4, 5 and 6. Those three winners will join the third seed in the quarterfinals Friday, March 4, in Milwaukee, and then those two winners will meet seeds 1 and 2 in the semifinals Saturday, March 5. Game times both days are 5:30 and 8 p.m. ET (4:30 and 7 p.m. CT).
The championship game will be played Tuesday, March 8, at the higher remaining seed. Tip-off is 9:05 p.m. ET (8:05 p.m. CT) on ESPN. The winner receives the Horizon League's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
UW-Milwaukee previously hosted the final three rounds of the League tournament in 2003 when the Panthers beat Butler 69-52 in the championship game. Last season UWM drew a tournament- and school-record crowd of 10,254 for the championship tilt in which the Panthers lost to UIC 65-62.
For ticket information regarding all rounds of the 2005 Horizon League Men's Basketball Championship, fans should contact their respective school's athletic ticket office.
