Battle-tested UNO relishing tournament bid, prepares for First Four NCAA.com
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PRESENTED BY DAYTON, Ohio – You don’t have to be North Carolina or Villanova to cherish March. The man at the microphone Monday was Mark Slessinger, who coaches for the school and program that were nearly washed away by Hurricane Katrina, and he was struggling to explain what this week means. MARCH MADNESS SHOP "For this moment to be real, I wish I could put it into words in the right way that could sound eloquent,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s possible.” Slessinger is here at the First Four with the New Orleans Privateers. When he took the job in 2011, he had no assistants, three recruits who stayed with the team, and a school that was still trying to recover from Katrina. It had been knocked groggy, from top to bottom and the basketball program in between. The process was in motion to drop the Privateers from Division I. Another casualty of the storm. WATCH LIVE: at 6:30 ET via But he stayed the course because he loved New Orleans, and found enough players — none of them particularly highly-recruited — who felt the same way, and the school changed its thinking about Division I. And now they are here, as 20-11 champions of the Southland Conference, to open the NCAA Tournament Tuesday night against Mount St. Mary’s. Anyone who wants to know what that means to them, all you need do is listen. Twelve years after it blew through, Katrina has still not fully gone away, not from where they live. So to beat the odds in anything — New Orleans’ last NCAA Tournament was 21 years ago, back when the city was whole — will always feel special. Senior guard Christavious Gill: “It’s for the city, the program, the university, it’s for everybody in New Orleans who has been in New Orleans since the devastation of Katrina. Even the people that left, it’s for them, too. “Some people may have cried, even alumni from our school. I’ve seen people cry.” Senior guard Nate Frye: “There’s a lot of areas of New Orleans that haven’t come back. My father, he’s from the ninth ward, and he went to see his neighborhood, and it’s not even there. Congrats to on making the big dance. and crew good luck. — Sharief Ishaq (@ShariefWDSU) “We’re playing for things bigger than just us. We’re playing for things bigger than just a trophy. We’re playing for the regrowth of our school. RELATED: The East Region — NCAA March Madness (@marchmadness) DI Men' s Basketball News
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