Men’s Basketball To Play Baldwin-Wallace in First Round of NCAA Tournament

Feb. 27 - (PITTSBURGH, Pa.) – The Carnegie Mellon University men’s basketball team (20-5) achieved what they set out to do at the beginning of the season, win the University Athletic Association (UAA) and receive an invite to the NCAA Division III Tournament. With a 78-68 victory over the University of Rochester Saturday, February 25 the Tartans did just that. When the NCAA Division III Men’s Basketball Committee announced the field of 59 teams for the 2006 Division III Men’s Basketball Championship Monday, Carnegie Mellon received a bid to play Baldwin-Wallace (24-4) in the opening round which will be held Friday, March 3 at Wittenberg University in Ohio. The tip is set for 6:00 p.m.

The winner of the Tartan / Yellow Jackets game will play the winner of the Wittenberg (25-3) / Lake Erie (21-6) game on Saturday in the second round. The winner of that match up will advance to the Sectionals the following weekend, March 10-11.

This year’s Tartan team becomes only the second team in school history to make the NCAA playoffs. The last time Carnegie Mellon earned a bid to the NCAA playoffs was in 1977 as they dropped an 82-68 decision to the eventual national champion Wittenberg University. With 20 wins this season the 2005-2006 Tartans recorded the first ever 20 win season in the 99 year history of the program.

Carnegie Mellon is led by a core of seniors. Nate Maurer (Pittsburgh, Pa/Linsly School) ranks second in the UAA with 18.7 points per game. Clayton Barlow-Wilcox’s (Brookline, Mass.) 15.8 points per contest is sixth best in the league and the teams’ second best behind Maurer. Barlow-Wilcox has a team leading 8.6 rebounds per game, which is good enough for third best in the league.

Marques Johnson (Pittsburgh, Pa./Upper St. Clair) leads the team with 90 assists and averages 12.3 points and 5.0 rebounds per game. A.J. Straub (St. Marys, Pa./Elk County Catholic), who is third in the UAA in three-point field goal percentage, is shooting 46% from behind the arc and averages 10.8 points per game. Straub has connected in 28 consecutive games from long range and currently ranks second on Carnegie Mellon’s all-time career three-point field goals made list with 199 for his career. He needs five more to tie for the most in school history.

Thirty-seven conferences have been granted automatic qualification for the 2006 championship. Four independent teams and 18 other at-large teams from automatic qualifying conferences who did not receive their conference automatic qualification were selected by using specific selection criteria approved by the Division III Championships Committee.

Five two-team, first-round games will be conducted Thursday, March 2 with the winners advancing to play five teams which received first-round byes on Saturday, March 4. Eleven sites will host four teams for first- and second-round competition Friday-Saturday, March 3-4. Second-round winners will advance to one of four sectional-round sites March 10-11. Winners of the four sectional games will advance to the finals March 17 and 18. All games, except the finals, will be played on the campuses of competing institutions. The finals will be conducted at the Salem Civic Center in Salem, Virginia.