Feb. 28, 2002

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Chicago, Ill. - The road to the Horizon League Championship for the UIC men's basketball team starts with an old rival, UW-Milwaukee.

UW-Milwaukee captured the opening game against UIC as they rallied from an 11-point deficit in the first half and used a 52-15 run to close out the game for the 75-49 victory at the Klotsche Center on January 12th.

UIC, however got their payback at the Pavilion on February 7th when UIC sophomore point guard Martell Bailey banked in a 24-footer at the buzzer to complete an 11-0 UIC run in the game's final 2:16 giving the Flames a 73-71 victory.

Both teams will do battle once again on Saturday as the No. 3 seed Panthers will take on the No. 6 seed Flames at 7:30 PM in the Horizon League Quarterfinals at the Cleveland State Convocation Center.

The Horizon League tournament will kick off on Friday as No. 8 seed UW-Green Bay will do battle with No. 9 seed Youngstown State for the right to battle regular-season champion Butler on Saturday.

The sixth-seeded Flames (17-13, 8-8 Horizon League) went streaking into the season's final weekend, but came out with two losses, at Wright State 63-62 on Thursday and at Butler 85-61 on Saturday.

Milwaukee (16-12, 11-5) tied for the league's second spot with Detroit, but received the tourney's third seed due to the tiebreaker.

The Panthers, entering the tournament off a 76-66 season finale win at Wisconsin-Green Bay on Monday, boast one of the league's most complete players in Clay Tucker. The senior forward is second in the league in scoring with 17.3 points per game and he is fifth in rebounding with a 6.2 average.

As the league's top scoring team (76.1 ppg), Milwaukee holds plenty of offensive firepower to complement Tucker, including Ronnie Jones (13.5 ppg) and Jason Frederick (10.9 ppg).

UIC has scoring power of its own. Newcomer Cedrick Banks' 13.6 average leads the Flames in scoring while mainstays such as Jordan Kardos (12.4 ppg, 47 percent 3-point shooting) and Jonathan Schneiderman (9.1 ppg, 45 percent 3-point shooting) provide plenty of balance.

The Flames have noted the revenge factor that may persist in the Panthers camp from the stinging defeat they suffered at the Pavilion in early February, yet, UIC remains steadfast in its primary goal at the tournament.

"We know they want to beat us after we got them here at the buzzer, but the bottom line is that we want to go out there and win," said Schneiderman, a junior guard. "It doesn't matter who we're playing-Milwaukee, Detroit, Butler-because if we lose we come home."

The winner of the Flames-Panthers match-up with take on the winner of #7 Cleveland State and #2 Detroit on Sunday in the semifinals.