Valley plans Arch Madness at St. Louis tournament

The Missouri Valley Conference men's basketball tournament, of which SMSU is a member, returns to St. Louis for the 10th installment of "Arch Madness" in the spring of 2000 and for a sixth event at Kiel Center, according to a release from the conference.

Qualifying-round games for the 2000 tournament begin on March 3.

Quarterfinal action starts on March 4.

Each of the quarterfinal games will be telecast on over-the-air stations in Missouri Valley Conference cities.

The semifinal session, which includes both games, will be held March 5. Games will be televised on Fox Sports Midwest and Fox Sports Chicago.

The championship game will be played on March 6. The game will be telecast live on ESPN.

The Civic Entrepreneurs Organization (CEO) renewed its sponsorship of the tournament for a 10th straight year. CEO is an organization comprising more than 100 business executives from the St. Louis metropolitan area.

The title sponsor of the MVC tournament since 1988, Diet Pepsi will serve as the driving corporate force for its 13th league men's basketball championship.

"The conference is in the midst of a tremendous upswing," said Doug Elgin, commissioner of the Missouri Valley Conference. "Diet Pepsi's involvement with our men's basketball tournament and network television package has been one of the keys to the conference's rise to prominence."

The tournament site moved from Kiel Auditorium in 1991 to the Saint Louis Arena from 1992 through 1994 to its current home at the Kiel Center in 1995. The tournament drew more than 45,000 fans in 1999 at Kiel Center.

In fact, the MVC's 1999 figure of 47,885 a Missouri Valley Conference tournament record ranked seventh nationally in total attendance for conference tournaments and sixth in per-session average at 9,577.

Since the conference moved its tournament to St. Louis in 1991, some of the greatest moments in MVC men's basketball history have occurred there.

In 1995, Southern Illinois completed a three-peat at the conference tournament the only time a league school has won three consecutive tourney championships.

In the 1996 semifinals, Bradley's Deon Jackson hit an improbable three-pointer with no time remaining for a 64-62 win over Southwest Missouri State. Jackson's shot was nominated for an ESPN "ESPY Award" for the college basketball play of the year.

And in 1998, Illinois State took its second-straight regular-season and conference tournament titles the first time in Missouri Valley Conference history that a school had accomplished that feat.

For the fourth consecutive year, the 2000 MVC tournament field will include all 10 league teams. The first year the tourney was played in St. Louis, in 1991, all nine of the league schools participated, but from years 1992 to 1996, only the top eight regular-season finishers in the conference standings qualified for the MVC tournament.

Each of the top four seeds Evansville, Creighton, Southwest Missouri State and Bradley posted victories in the quarterfinals.

For Evansville, it was the first triumph for the Purple Aces in the Valley conference tournament since UE joined the conference in 1994.

In two memorable semifinal matchups, Evansville defeated Bradley, 64-63, while Creighton outlasted SMS, 78-70, to reach the tournament finals for the first time since winning the first MVC tournament in St. Louis in 1991.

In front of another national television audience, Creighton won its fifth overall Missouri Valley Conference tournament title, defeating the Purple Aces, 70-61. A crowd of 8,040 fans at Kiel Center witnessed Creighton clinch its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1991.