by MILWAUKEE – For the third consecutive season, the Milwaukee women’s basketball team has earned the right to play in a postseason tournament.
UWM – which won 20 games for just the fourth time in program history and the first time in back-to-back seasons – accepted an at-large bid to the WNIT and will play UNI in Cedar Falls, Iowa Thursday.
The WNIT berth is the second in the last three years for Milwaukee, who has now made a postseason tournament each of the last three years.
“We are thrilled to be headed back to the postseason and to the WNIT,” Milwaukee head coach Kyle Rechlicz said. “I think most people know about our great group of seniors and what they’ve done here, and now we get to make another postseason run with them.
“This is also a tribute to the Horizon League. To have three members of our conference in the WNIT – and five total in the postseason – is no short order. It shows just how strong and how deep this league was this year and we’re excited to use that experience heading into this tournament.”
Milwaukee turned in an impressive resume to earn this year’s berth, posting two road wins over the Big Ten (Northwestern and Wisconsin), five wins over schools ranked in the Mid-Major Top-25 this season (at Western Illinois, at IUPUI, Cleveland State [twice] and Wright State) and a win over CSUN, who qualified for this year’s NCAA Tournament.
Northern Iowa enters postseason play with a 19-13 overall record and a 13-5 mark in the Missouri Valley. They advanced to the MVC Conference Tournament Championship before falling to Drake, 75-63.
UWM and UNI have met eight times, but not back in December of 2010 in Milwaukee.
The winner of Thursday’s game will go up against the winner of Indiana and UT Martin. That second-round contest would take place sometime between March 17-20.
