Mid-Con Tournaments a Success
CHAMPIONSHIP ACTION: ORU guard Ken Tutt drives around Oakland star Rawle Marshall in the packed-house Mid-Con championship game. Oakland stunned the favored Golden Eagles to take the men’s title. ORU won the women’s division.
RALPH YOUNGER for GTR Newspapers
The Mid-Continent Men’s and Women’s Championship Basketball Tournaments, held March 5-8 at the Union Multipurpose Activity Center, were a success, according to organizers and sponsors.
While local favorite Oral Roberts University fell in the men’s championship, the ORU women won their championship for a trip to the NCAA Tournament, where they eventually lost to Texas.
Though the ORU men lost a heart breaker to Oakland, the UMAC was packed with fans for the final game.
The major sponsors of the four-day event were Toshiba as the title sponsor and United Ford of Tulsa and the Eastern Oklahoma Orthopedic Center as the local sponsors.
Several years of planning took place for the acquisition and production of the tournament. Representatives of the Tulsa Sports Commission and ORU were instrumental in securing the event.
Teams and their fans visited the area from the conference schools, which include Centenary College of Louisiana, Indiana-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), the University of Missouri at Kansas City (UMKC), Oakland (Mich.) University, ORU, Southern Utah University, Valparaiso University and Western Illinois University.
Mid-Con Commissioner Ron Bertovich congratulated the Tulsa Sports Commission on its success in procuring Toshiba as the title sponsor. He said, “Toshiba’s substantial commitment, along with that of all our corporate sponsors, provide a true indication of the marquee value of this event. We thank all of them for their generous support.”
The Tulsa Sports Commission is working to procure the tournament again next year.
Updated 03-30-2005
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