bills07

kshoe is absolutely right. Turns out our first round opponent on Friday is going to be Iowa State. The other semifinal game is between Northwestern and Notre Dame. Just like last year with Creighton in Vegas, a matchup with Notre Dame is not a guarentee. http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/2...1094/SPORTS0206 At the bottom of the article: "Iowa State will play in the Chicago Invitational Challenge over the Thanksgiving holiday against Saint Louis University and either Northwestern or Notre Dame."

Kennesaw State and Mississippi Valley State will be at Chaifetz as a part of the 1st and 2nd rounds of the Chicago Invitational Challenge. These games will be played sometime between Nov. 20-25 before the team heads off to Hoffman Estates. To revise our list of known non-conference opponents: Home: Southeast Missouri State (Saturday, Nov 14) Nebraska (Wednesday, Nov 18) Kennesaw State (Chicago Invitational Challenge) Mississippi Valley State (Chicago Invitational Challenge) Southern Illinois Missouri State Belmont (Wednesday, Dec 16) Neutral: Notre Dame (Friday, Nov 27 at the Sears Centre) Northwestern/Iowa State (Saturday, Nov 28 at the Sears Centre)

Liberty rounds out the tournament field of eight and will play it's first and second round games at Northwestern and Notre Dame. Kennesaw State and Mississippi Valley State will be the two opponents that SLU will face at Chaifetz. Official announcements should be up on the tourney website soon.

Home game vs. Nebraska is Wednesday, November 18.

Just like the Las Vegas Classic from a year ago, we will be playing the first and second "rounds" at home before we head to Hoffman Estates for the semifinals and championship. The second tier group of teams in the tournament includes Tennessee State (12-18 last season), Kennesaw State (7-22), Mississippi Valley State (7-25), and a fourth school that I'm not sure about at this time. Tennessee State is already slated to play Northwestern and Iowa State in their first two games, so thus we will be facing two schools out of the trio of Kennesaw State, MVSU, and the team TBA for our first two games in the tournament.

The 4th major team of the field is Northwestern out of the Big Ten. The tournament works much like the Las Vegas Classic from this year. It looks like the four host schools for early round games will be Notre Dame, SLU, Northwestern, and Iowa State. This year's field looked like this with Dayton taking the title over Marquette: Upper Bracket: Marquette Dayton Auburn Northern Iowa Lower Bracket: Chicago State Mercer Bethune-Cookman Texas Southern Hopefully a couple decent teams will emerge from next year's lower bracket such as Liberty has this year so as not to be such a damper on the RPI as there will probably be several other "guarantee games" on the schedule for this young team.