THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 8, 1996 TAG: 9608080546
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ED MILLER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 47 lines
The Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference is bringing its men's basketball tournament to Norfolk next March, but don't look for local teams in the field.
Norfolk State won't join the conference until the 1997-98 season, and Hampton, which is already a conference member, is ineligible for tournament play.
So why bring the tournament to Norfolk State's Echols Arena?
Plans called for the tournament to return to last year's site: Tallahassee, Fla.. But due to a scheduling mixup, Tallahassee's Leon County Civic Center was not available on the days needed, March 5-8.
Scrambling to find a site, conference officials fell back on Norfolk, where the tournament was held from 1991-93.
``Looking at the attendance figures, the tournament by all appearances had been a success there,'' commissioner Charles Harris said. ``Norfolk is a great basketball city. It looked like a natural.''
With no local team involved, the tournament drew a four-day total of 7,353 fans in its first year, and similarly modest crowds the next two. The tournament was held at Scope, which was not available for next year's tournament. It will return to Norfolk for one year. Bids are being sought for subsequent tournaments, Harris said.
If Norfolk State and Hampton were eligible, Norfolk would seem to be an ideal site for the MEAC tournament. Fans of both schools have flocked to the CIAA tournament for years, making it one of the best-attended tournaments in college basketball.
But under NCAA rules, neither Norfolk State nor Hampton will be eligible for the MEAC tournament until well into the next century. The NCAA requires new Division I members to wait eight years before they are eligible to receive an automatic bid from their conference tournament. So if Hampton or Norfolk State played in the MEAC tournament, and won it, the conference would forfeit its automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.
Harris said the conference, which is unlikely to receive any at-large bids to the tournament, can't afford to lose its automatic bid.
Hampton became a Division I member during the 1995-96 season, making it eligible for the tournament in 2004. Norfolk State is scheduled to go Division I in 1997-98, and would have to wait until 2006, unless the NCAA rules are changed.
Current MEAC schools are Hampton, Bethune-Cookman, Coppin State, Delaware State, Florida A&M, Howard, Maryland-Eastern Shore, Morgan State, North Carolina A&T and South Carolina State. by CNB