A new season begins tonight for the Lincoln Blue Tigers.
The Blue Tigers (14-14) will open the MIAA Tournament at 8:15 p.m. today with a first-round matchup against the Emporia State Hornets (19-11) at Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City.
“It’s a fresh start for us, everybody is kind of re-energized, we are all 0-0 and it’s an exciting time of the year,” Lincoln coach Jimmy Drew said. “Everybody loves to be involved in March and I think everybody is going to put their best foot forward. It should be fun to compete.”
It will be the sixth matchup in the past two seasons between the Blue Tigers and the Hornets.
Seventh-seeded Emporia State won all three contests last season, including a 79-70 decision in the quarterfinals of the conference tournament.
Lincoln, the 10th seed in the tournament, split the two games this year, beating the Hornets in a 71-63 final Jan. 11 at Jason Gym and dropping a 66-57 decision Feb. 24 on the road.
“There are no secrets this time of year, everybody knows everybody forward and backward, the players all know each other really well and have competed against each other,” Drew said. “It’s a team we’ve seen plenty of. There won’t be any surprises, it’s just going to be who comes out and executes better and who’s the tougher team.”
But tonight will mark the final conference matchup between Emporia State and the Blue Tigers, as Lincoln is set to join the Great Lakes Valley Conference next season.
“It’s unfortunate we won’t see them anymore because they do end up being really good games,” Drew said. “… It’s two good teams, it’s two pretty evenly matched teams, two totally different styles, which makes it fun to prepare for. Those games always come down to being really good games.”
Lincoln enters the postseason with little momentum after dropping its final four regular-season games.
But instead of dwelling on the negatives, the Blue Tigers are focused on the positives headed into a win-or-go-home scenario.
“We just showed them a bunch of positivity,” Drew said. “We know everybody is frustrated, everybody is disappointed with how the regular season ended and there was low energy there, so we just decided we were going to flip and go the opposite way with it. We showed our guys a lot of the good things they’ve done throughout the year.
“And at the end of the day, you had to do enough to earn your way here. They don’t just hand out those spots, not everybody gets to go in this league. So even though the season ended in a disappointing fashion, you still did enough to give yourselves an opportunity to do what we want to do.”
With a victory tonight, Lincoln would move on to face No. 2 seed and 16th-ranked Fort Hays State (22-6) at 8:15 p.m. Thursday.
The Blue Tigers would need four wins in five days to claim their first-ever MIAA Tournament championship in their final trip through the league.
“We are just only worrying about Emporia right now,” Drew said. “… The focus of our week has been the defensive end and competing more on that end. We are not looking past them at all, we have to focus on them.”