INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- For the first time in nearly two decades the SCAC will have three teams competing for the national championship as regular season champion Trinity University, tournament champion Centenary College and University of St. Thomas were among the 64 teams selected for the 2024 NCAA Division III Men’s Basketball Championship. NCAA Release | Bracket
This year marks the first time since 1995 the SCAC has sent three men’s teams into the national championship and assured the league back-to-back seasons with multiple teams competing in the dance since 2009 after sending two last year.
Trinity (23-3) and Centenary (17-11) are part of a four-team pod (first and second rounds) hosted by the Tigers in San Antonio, Texas at the Bell Center. Competition begins on Friday, March 1, with the winners of those games squaring off on Saturday for a trip to the section round.
The Tigers will begin this year’s post season journey at home with a first round matchup against UT-Dallas (18-9), who earned the automatic bid from the American Southwest Conference by defeating Hardin-Simmons 78-77 on Saturday. The ASC tournament championship is the fifth in program history for UT-Dallas and the first since 2019.
Despite dropping a 71-70 decision to Colorado College in Saturday’s SCAC semifinal, Trinity earned one of 22 at-large (Pool-C) bids into the NCAA Tournament. This will be Trinity’s 12th NCAA Tournament appearance and second in the last three years. Friday night will mark the first time since 2013 the Trinity men have hosted an NCAA Tournament contest. Historically the SCAC is 3-10 all-time in the NCAA Tournament versus the ASC.
Centenary, which captured it’s second SCAC Tournament Championship Sunday afternoon, earning the league’s automatic bid into the dance will take on Nebraska Wesleyan (23-4) that earned an at-large bid after falling to Loras in the American Rivers Conference final on Saturday evening. This year marks the 18th NCAA appearance for the Prairie Wolves and first since 2020. This will be the first time in history the SCAC and ARC have squared off in the NCAA Tournament.
Centenary will be making it’s second-ever NCAA tournament appearance. The Gents dropped a heartbreaking first round contest to UT-Dallas, 83-81, in the 2020 national championships.
St. Thomas’ (20-6) season continues as the Celts are making their second-straight NCAA Tournament appearance, marking just the second time in league history the SCAC has secured two at-large bids. UST travels west to take on Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (20-6) in first round action at host California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, California. CMS earned the automatic bid out of the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) be defeating Cal Lutheran on Saturday night. It marks the first NCAA Tournament appearance for the Stags since 2017. The SCAC is 1-2 all-time versus the SCIAC in NCAA Tournament play.
On the other side of the pod, host Cal Lutheran (23-4) will face Whitworth (19-8) in the other opening round game with the winners facing off on Saturday.
The championship provides for a 64-team tournament. Automatic qualification (AQ) is granted to 42 conference champions, which form “Pool A.” The remaining 22 teams are selected from those teams in conferences with automatic bids that did not win their conference’s AQ and the remaining Pool B institutions (Pool C). The teams are geographically paired, whenever possible.
Sixteen sites will host four teams for first- and second-round competition Friday-Saturday, March 1-2. Second-round winners will advance to one of four sectional sites March 8-9. Winners of the four sectional championship games will advance to the semi-finals and finals March 14 and 16. All games, except the semi-finals and finals, will be played on the campuses of competing institutions. The semi-finals and finals will be held at the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
