Ask Tate and Turpin about Stony Brook here

Staff writer Marcus Jackson breaks down the second-most popular tournament which, for the first time since 1996, includes Illinois

Remembering '96

Jerry Hester, who started as a guard on Lou Henson's team that lost to Alabama in the first round of the 1996 NIT, has some advice for this season's Illini:

"You're feeling dejected and you don't have a whole lot of time to get over that because you find out Sunday and the NIT starts Tuesday. You've got to practice and it's a tough situation for the players and the coaches. Going into the game, you do feel like, 'Why are we here? We should be playing on Thursday or Friday instead of this game.' Once the ball goes up, though, you're playing a game and you throw all that stuff out the window and you're competing against another team.

"The one thing you do have to look forward to is you get to play in the mecca (Madison Square Garden) if you do win. The NIT for a team like Illinois, and I'm sure the coaches will talk about this with the team, is it's a situation to play games and that's the positive thing. You can get better."

Just who is Stony Brook? And what about that tiny gym?

– Senior guard Muhammad El-Amin, a native of Lansing, Mich., was the America East Player of the Year. He averaged 17 points per game. Two other Seawolves, Bryan Dougher (13.6) and Chris Martin (10.7), average double figures.

– Stony Brook won the America East Conference with a 13-3 record. The Seawolves are 22-9 overall and lost in the semifinals of the conference tournament to Boston University and have an RPI of 142. The 22 wins and 13 conference wins are program records.

– Stony Brook went 3-0 against NCAA tournament teams, beating conference rival Vermont twice and Lehigh in a nonconference matchup.

– The Seawolves are in their 11th season as a Division I program, compiling a 122-198 record during that time.

– Coach Steve Pikiell was a two-time captain and four-year letter winner as a guard at Connecticut, playing for Jim Calhoun from 1987 to '91. He played in 106 career games and averaged a career-best 8.2 points as a freshman.

– Pritchard Gymnasium, which will host Wednesday's game, has a capacity of 1,680.

– The largest crowd Stony Brook played in front of this season was 4,030 at Rhode Island. The largest crowd at Pritchard Gymnasium was 1,650 against Vermont, and the average crowd the Seawolves played in front of this season was 1,514.

– "The View" co-host Joy Behar received a master's degree in English from Stony Brook. Minnesota Twins closer Joe Nathan played shortstop for Stony Brook when it was a Division III program. The new baseball field will be called Joe Nathan Field after Nathan made a $500,000 donation to the program.

Random thoughts

– Anyone who's been sleeping for the last 11 months might take a look at some of the names on the NIT bracket and confuse it with an NCAA bracket. Two teams that were top seeds in the Big Dance a year ago – defending champion North Carolina and Connecticut – are in the field. Memphis, a No. 2 seed under current Kentucky coach John Calipari in 2009, also dropped to the NIT. Top-seeded Illinois was a No. 5 seed last year. The folks in charge of the NIT are excited about having the big names included.

– Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg made a big stink about his 23-8 Hokies not being included in the NCAA tournament. Well, if top-seeded Virginia Tech gets past Quinnipiac in the first round, a potential matchup against Connecticut looms. We'll see just what the Hokies and their RPI of 56 are made of.

– It's a tough draw for Northwestern. A team that spent a week in the Top 25 and finished with 20 wins gets seeded seventh and plays a Rhode Island team that many pegged as one of the first four teams out of the tournament? Seems like the reputation of past basketball failures haunts the Wildcats, who had a respectable showing at the Big Ten tournament.