Cleveland State’s fourth consecutive postseason run will begin more like a 5K than a marathon.
The Vikings will open play in the Women’s Basketball Invitational Tournament (WBIT) just 119 miles west of the Wolstein Center, in Toledo’s Savage Arena, this coming Thursday, March 21st.
There, CSU will face a second-seeded Rockets team whose season holds at least a couple parallels to their own. UT won the MAC regular season championship with a stellar 17-1 conference record, part of a 26-5 overall mark, before being upset by Buffalo in the league tournament semifinals this past week. As with the Vikings, Toledo automatically qualified for the WBIT thanks to their season crown, combined with missing the cut for the NCAA Tournament.
Also similarly to Cleveland State, Toledo boasts the two most recent players of the year in their conference. In 2022-23, guard Quinesha Lockett, who averages 15.8 points and 6.2 rebounds this season, won the MAC honor. Last Tuesday, guard Sophia Wiard was voted Lockett’s successor, thanks to her 14.2 points and 4.7 assists per game. Additionally, Rockets coach Tricia Cullop, like Cleveland State’s Chris Kielsmeier, was named coach of the year by the league office.
Toledo’s most impressive victory this season, by far, was a 69-46 battering of Michigan back on December 6th. Their only game against a Horizon League opponent was a 78-65 victory at Oakland eleven days later, and they swept four meetings with the Vikings’ MAC opponents, Bowling Green, Akron and Central Michigan.
Another major storyline around the game involves CSU guard Mickayla Perdue, who spent the first two seasons of her collegiate career with at Toledo, though she only played sparingly for the Rockets.
Should the Vikings defeat UT, they’ll face the winner of a Florida-St. John’s contest in the round of 16.
The first three rounds of the WBIT will be played on the same dates across the field: March 21st, March 24th and March 28th, on the campus of the higher-seeded team in each matchup. The semifinals and championship game are set for April 1st and April 3rd in Indianapolis, at Butler University’s Hinkle Fieldhouse.
All preliminary round games can be seen on ESPN+, before linear television takes over for the semifinals and championship game, which will air on ESPNU and ESPN2, respectively.
The WBIT was introduced this season to serve as an NCAA-sponsored parallel to the men’s National Invitation Tournament (NIT). From 1998 through last season, that role has been filled by a separate tournament, the Women’s National Invitation Tournament (WNIT), though the WNIT is run outside of the NCAA, by a company called Triple Crown Sports. The WBIT, conversely, is owned by the NCAA and creates a total of 100 NCAA-funded postseason opportunities for Division I women’s basketball teams when including the 68 squads invited to the NCAA Tournament.
The WNIT and a fourth tournament, the Women’s Basketball Invitational – which Cleveland State won in 2021, of course – remain to provide postseason play for an additional 56 teams.
