A UMBC First: Men’s Basketball Team Upsets a Major-Conference Opponent on Road

The millions who follow the NCAA men’s basketball tournament know the importance of these three letters: RPI. Put them together and one has the Ratings Percentage Index, the system used since 1981 to select and rank teams for the March brackets mayhem so ingrained in the American sporting fabric.
The UMBC Retrievers never had beaten an opponent with an RPI ranking as high as 53. That changed December 23 in Lincoln, Neb., when the Retrievers upset the Nebraska Cornhuskers, 66-64.
Nebraska is a member of the Big 12 conference, one of the country’s top six conferences (with the Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big East, Southeastern and Pacific 10 conferences). The win was UMBC’s first over a team from one of the six major conferences.
Moreover, the Retrievers, 6-5, ended the eighth-longest non-conference home winning streak in the country. Nebraska had not lost a home game to a non-conference opponent since losing to the University of Alabama-Birmingham in December 2005. The Cornhuskers’ winning streak in non-conference home games had reached 31.
In 2007-08, head coach Randy Monroe led UMBC to its first-ever appearance in the NCAA Division I Tournament. The Retrievers, regular season champions in the America East Conference, secured an automatic bid by winning the tournament championship game at UMBC.
“I am extremely proud of our men’s basketball team and the success Randy Monroe and his staff are having after reaching the NCAA Tournament last season,” said UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III. “These young men continue to balance historic achievements for UMBC on the basketball court with a commitment to strong academic
work.”
Coverage of the upset, which ESPN college basketball analyst Dick Vitale noted in the network’s on-air coverage December 23, can be found at
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/recap?gameId=283580158 and
http://www.umbcretrievers.com/sports/mbball/release.asp?RELEASE_ID=4433.