Tribe Garners No. 5 Seed at the CAA Men's Basketball Championship

W&M will meet the No. 12 seed Georgia State in the first opening for the second straight year at 2:30 p.m.

03/03/08 11:30PM

Williamsburg - After producing the only the second 10-win CAA season in school history, the William and Mary men’s basketball team earned the No. 5 seed in the 2008 Aeropostale CAA Men’s Basketball Championship. The Tribe will open the event against the No. 12 seed Georgia State on Friday, March 7, at 2:30 p.m. The CAA Tournament will be held at the Richmond Coliseum in Richmond, Va., March 7-10.

The No. 5 seed is the Tribe’s best standing at the CAA Championship since being seeded No. 4 at the 2001 event. It will mark the second straight year that W&M has met the Panthers in the opening round of the tournament. In 2007, Georgia State brought the Tribe’s season to an end on a 35-foot heave at the buzzer. The College erased a nine-point deficit in the final 1:17 of the game, before former Tribe standout Adam Payton scored on the driving lay-up and converted a conventional 3-point play to give the College a 68-67 lead with 4.7 seconds remaining. Leonard Mendez sent Georgia State into the quarterfinals with long-range heave at the buzzer.

The winner of the Tribe-Panther battle will meet the No. 4 seed Old Dominion in the quarterfinals at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 8. In other opening round games, No. 8 Hofstra will meet No. 9 Towson at noon, No. 7 Delaware will battle No. 10 Drexel at 6 p.m. and No. 6 Northeastern wraps up the day with No. 11 James Madison at 8:30 p.m. For the second straight year, VCU won the regular season and is the No. 1 seed at the championship, while UNCW and George Mason are seeded No. 2 and No. 3, respectively. The semifinals are slated for 3 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, March 9, with the Championship Game schedule for 7 p.m. tip on Monday, March 10.

All 11 games of the CAA Championship will be available on various media platforms. The four first-round games on Friday, March 7, will be webstreamed on CAASports.com. The games will be available free to CAA fans by visiting the conference website. The four Saturday quarterfinal games and the two Sunday semifinal games will be televised by CN8 and on the web at CN8.tv. Regional sports networks CSS and SportsNet New York and WSKY in eastern Virginia will also carry quarterfinal and semifinal games. Monday’s title game will be televised nationally on ESPN at 7 p.m.

The entire CAA Men’s Basketball Championship will also be broadcast nationally on Sirius Satellite Radio channel 119. In Richmond, ESPN Radio 950 AM will air the games. W&M fans can follow all the Tribe action on the Tribe Radio Network with Jay Colley, Bill McDonald and Charlie Woollum on the call. Fans can also follow W&M men’s basketball live on the Web at TribeAthletics.com.