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14 Seed: Kent State Golden Flashes - 22-13
3 Seed: UCLA Bruins - 29-4
Tip: Friday, March 17, 2017 30 minutes after the 6:27 p.m. EST game
Venue: Golden 1 Center, capacity - 15,745
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- The Kent State men's basketball team will make its sixth trip to the NCAA Tournament, beginning Friday, March 17 against UCLA in the late game in Sacramento.
- The Golden Flashes return to the tournament for the first time since 2008. The year also marks the 15th anniversary of the 2002 team that advanced to the Elite 8.
- Kent State's journey to the 2017 NCAA Tournament has been filled with peaks and valleys. Kent State had a nonconference season that included a win at Texas, but losses to Oregon State and Wright State.
- MAC play got off to a rough start at 1-4. Although the team earned road wins later at Northern Illinois and Eastern Michigan, there were several bumps along the way. The bottom was reached when the Flashes lost at Toledo, 78-58, to drop to 5-7 in the MAC.
- The turnaround for Kent State came at halftime during the team's home game at Miami on Valentine's Day. Down 31-26, senior walk on Jon Fleming rallied his team in the locker room with a season-altering speech. Since that moment, the Flashes are 9-1 and are the 2017 MAC Champions.
- Although the Flashes have lost just one game in the last month, it nearly all fell apart on March 6, when Central Michigan played Kent State to the highest scoring game in MAC Tournament history. Before overtime, Central Michigan had an open floor layup opportunity, followed by an open 3-pointer that rimmed out. With a new lease on life, Kent State scored 25 points in overtime to win.
- In Cleveland at Quicken Loans Arena, the Flashes defeated the third, second and first ranked teams in the MAC in succession. After wins over Buffalo and Ohio, Kent State faced their century-long rivals Akron in front of nearly 11,000 people. Kent State won the series rubber match by five, but led nearly wire-to-wire.
- The championship earned head coach Rob Senderoff his first trip to the NCAA Tournament as a head coach, and the first trip for seniors Jimmy Hall, Deon Edwin and Jon Fleming.
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