DAYTON, Ohio – North Carolina Central University is in the NCAA Division-I Men's Basketball Tournament for just the second time in program history, and the Eagles will begin their 2017 run in Dayton, Ohio against UC Davis on Wednesday, March 15.
NCCU (25-8) makes its inaugural trip to Dayton in the NCAA Tournament for one of the four play-in games, and the Eagles will meet UC Davis (22-12), who is making its first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance. The winner of this game moves on to face No. 1 seed Kansas in Tulsa, Oklahoma as part of the Midwest Region.
The Eagles haven't had much time to rest since winning the MEAC Tournament Championship against Norfolk State on Saturday, March 11, but head coach
LeVelle Moton, his staff and the team have been hard at work for preparing for the primetime game.
"We got back on Sunday night and they announced who we're going to play," Moton said. "Once they announce, you know it's a good team but you just don't know who you're playing, and you have to scramble to find tape and make some phone calls to some friends that you trust in the business about them."
For senior guards
Patrick Cole (Newark, N.J.) and
Dajuan Graf (Charlotte, N.C.) the experience of the sendoff from McDougald-McLendon Arena all the way through to arriving at the hotel has been fantastic.
"For this being my first time and a lot of my teammates' first time, the experience from leaving school to getting on a plane, to getting off the plane just was tremendous," said Cole. "It just had me thinking about how there's a lot of student-athletes that didn't get this opportunity through four years of their college experience, and I'm blessed to be one of them. My teammates are as well.
"This experience has been great so far, but I try to reiterate to the guys that we're not here just to participate, we're here to win a basketball game."
The Aggies roll into the NCAA Tournament as a hot team, winners of six of their last seven games. UC Davis is led by Brynton Lemar (San Diego, Calif.) and Chima Moneke (Canberra, Australia), who are both All-Big West First Team selections. Lemar is the Aggies' leading scorer and third-leading scorer in the Big West with 16.1 points per game and he nailed 74 three-pointers. Moneke was also billed as the Big West Newcomer of the Year as the league's leading rebounder with 9.4 boards per outing, and he was also the team's second-leading scorer with 14.4 points per contest.
When the Eagles and Aggies meet in UD Arena, it will be in one of the largest venues of the year with the largest stakes for both teams, but Moton says NCCU's non-conference schedule, plus a veteran roster can give them an edge.
"I think what really makes us better is our nonconference schedule," Moton said. "That's why we try to play a challenging one because we've been to those venues. We've been to Ohio State, we've been to Marshall, we've been to LSU, we've been to Missouri. We've been in the MEAC Tournament. We've had the pressure of maintaining a one-game lead in the MEAC to win the regular season. We have the pressure of dismissing all of that and having to depend on just 72 hours for your season to continue.
"We need some experience here, because everyone else is going to get the one-and-dones, and when that experience meets those one-and-dones we think that's the great equalizer beyond the talent.
"I think that's gotten us out of a couple of venues and kept us in a couple of games and kept us from cracking during pivotal times, our experience."
NCCU has been hard at work preparing for UC Davis in the short amount of time, and Graf expects a hard fought game from both sides of the floor.
"UC Davis is going to play hard, and they're going to play aggressive. This is a tournament game, nobody wants to go home. We have to play aggressive and want to win it more."
Tipoff is scheduled for 6:40 p.m. and will be carried live on truTV, and also available to view on NCAA.com.
