BCSP Notes . . .

With the departure of Winston-Salem State University from the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) and its Western Division last year, the league has been left with six teams in the Eastern Division and five in the West. To handle the divisional disparity, the conference office announced Tuesday a change in format that will govern the brackets, seedings and start times for its annual basketball tournament to be held February 26 - March 3 at the Charlotte Bobcats' Arena.

The CIAA has adopted an 11-team bracket for this year's tournament instead of the divisional bracket it has used for the last several years. In the old format, teams were seeded 1 thru 6 in each division with the top two teams in each division receiving first-round byes. In the new format, teams will be seeded 1 thru 11 with the top five teams receiving first-round byes.

That means for this year's tournament instead of four women's opening round games on Monday and four men's opening round games on Wednesday, there will be only three games on those days. The league announced those start times as 3, 7 and 9 p.m.

Regular game times of 1 p.m., 3 p.m., 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. will continue for quarterfinal and semifinal tournament games. The women's final is scheduled for 5 p.m. on Saturday with the men's final to follow at 8 p.m.

Overall conference records instead of division records will be used to seed the teams. Using the conference record is possible now that the league mandates all teams to play each conference member twice in the regular season. The actual matchups and seedings will be announced Sunday, February 25. For the 2006-07 regular season and tournament, the Eastern and Western Divisions will remain intact, however Tournament seeding will be based on conference records.

If teams share the same conference record, the tie-breaker procedure used will be 1) Divisional Record, 2) Head-to-Head Competition and 3) Coin Toss.

Tucker out after 26 years as Howard soccer coach

Keith Tucker, whose Howard University men's soccer teams have struggled to regain national prominence since reaching the 1988 NCAA title game, will not return after 26 seasons.

"After careful review and consideration, we have decided to progress to a different direction with our soccer program," Athletic Director Dwight Datcher said in a prepared statement.

The Bison won just 17 games the past five years, including a 3-13-1 overall record and an 0-6 mark in the Atlantic Soccer Conference last fall. Tucker, a former Howard player, was named the NCAA coach of the year in 1988 after guiding a squad of mostly unknown players from the Caribbean, Africa and the United States to the final four with an undefeated record. After upsetting top-ranked Virginia, 3-2, in overtime in Charlottesville in the quarterfinals, the Bison defeated South Carolina, 2-0, before losing to host Indiana, 1-0, on a controversial call that led to a decisive penalty kick.

Tucker's star pupil on that team was freshman goalkeeper Shaka Hislop, who went on to play 14 seasons in the English league and star for Trinidad and Tobago at the 2006 World Cup in Germany before signing with MLS's FC Dallas late last season.

Howard advanced to the quarterfinals in 1989, ousted again by the Hoosiers, but has made only one NCAA tournament appearance since -- a 1997 first-round loss to Virginia.

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