LANSING, Mich- The Great Lakes Christian College Men's Basketball team continued to make history Sunday night, when they found out they qualified for the NCCAA DII Men's Basketball National Tournament in Greeville, South Carolina March 7-9 on the campus of Bob Jones University. The Crusaders accepted the at large bid after falling 84-78 in the Mideast Region final Saturday afternoon. The bid is the first national tournament bid for any sport in school history. The Crusaders are seeded fourth out of eight teams will take on the fifth seeded Arlington Baptist University (TX) out of the Southwest Region at 10:00am EST on March 7th. The Crusaders will leave for South Carolina March 4th in their quest for the school's first National Title. The Crusaders head into the national tournament 19-11 overall and 11-2 against NCCAA opponents.
The tournament was seeded:
- Randall University (SW Region Automatic Qualifer)
- Grace Christian University (ME Region At Large)
- Johnson University (TN) (ME Region Automatic Qualifier)
- Great Lakes Christian College (ME Region At Large)
- Arlington Baptist (SW Region At Large)
- Trinity Baptist College (S Region Automatic Qualifier)
- Bob Jones University (S At Large/Host School)
- Maranatha Baptist University (N Region Automatic Qualifier)
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What Coach Says:
"I am very excited for the opportunity our guys will have to compete for a national title. They have worked hard for this opportunity. This was one of our goals all year, and to see it come to fruition is really rewarding as the coach, and to coach the first team in school history to go to the national tournament is obviously special." On the matchup with Arlington, "Arlington is a very good team. They play in one of the toughest and easily the deepest region in the NCCAA. We will have to be ready to play and defend them well. They have great interior presence and some really nice guard play. Obviously we knew in order to win a national championship we would need to beat some really good teams to achieve that. Arlington is no exception. They have always been a perrenial power in the NCCAA, but I believe our guys are up for the challenge."