New Mexico State women's basketball accepts WBI postseason invitation
LAS CRUCES - New Mexico State women's basketball has announced its plans to extend its season by accepting an invite to the Women's Basketball Invitational (WBI), which is set to take place March 17-19 in Lexington, KY. NM State is scheduled to play The University of Illinois-Chicago on Friday at 12:30 p.m. The other teams participating in this year's WBI include East Tennessee State, Florida International, California Baptist, North Dakota State, Georgia Southern and Northern Arizona. The eight-team tournament is entering its 13th year of existence, having celebrated its first year in 2010 with Appalachian State winning the tournament. The WBI prides itself in providing Division I programs the "opportunity to expand their season in an effort to capitalize on a successful season while gaining championship experience and momentum for the following season." Last year's tournament featured Bowling Green, Furman, Saint Mary's, Austin Peay State, Davidson, Nevada, Cleveland State and Northeastern, with Saint Mary's coming out on top as Champions. The tournament will feature 12 games and is designed to guarantee each team three games by dividing the tournament up into two brackets: a winner's bracket and a consolation bracket. Teams who win their day one matchup will be put into the winner's bracket, with the other four teams being placed into the consolation bracket. New Mexico State is coming off a crushing loss in the quarterfinal round of the WAC Tournament this past week after losing to eventual champion Southern Utah on a last-second shot at the buzzer. By accepting the invite, the Aggies will participate in their sixth postseason tournament in the last nine seasons and tenth in program history. The Aggies' last postseason appearance came in 2019 when they lost to three-seed Iowa State in the NCAA Tournament. Although NM State has yet to win a postseason game in their program's history, Jody Adams has plenty of experience when it comes to winning in the postseason. While playing at Tennessee (1990-1993) under legendary head coach Pat Summitt, Adams advanced to the NCAA Tournament in each of her four seasons with the Lady Vols and captured the NCAA's ultimate prize with a national championship in 1991. As a coach, Adams has seen her fair share of the postseason as well, having coached 16 games in ten appearances as both a head coach and an assistant. Coach Adams' record in the postseason stands at 6-10 overall and 2-7 as a head coach. In her 14 years as a coach, Adams has made five NCAA Tournament appearances (3-5), four WNIT appearances (2-4) and one WBI appearance (1-1). This will be Adams' second consecutive trip to the postseason after she helped take Southern Illinois to the WNIT last season as an associate head coach. Adams' last appearance in the postseason as a head coach came in 2015 when she took a 29-5 Wichita State team to the NCAA Tournament after winning the Missouri Valley Conference. In her second season at Wichita State, Adams led the Shockers to their first postseason appearance in ten years when she took them to the WBI in 2010, where they split a pair of games. Now Adams becomes just the third coach in NM State history to reach the postseason in their first year with the program, joining Brooke Atkinson (2017-2018, WNIT) and Joe McKeown (1986-1987, NCAA) as the only coaches to do so. She can become the first coach in program history to win a postseason game at NM State with a win in the WBI and help shake off the loss in Las Vegas last week, sending the program into Conference USA with some added momentum.
This article originally appeared on Las Cruces Sun-News: New Mexico State women's basketball accepts WBI postseason invitation
