KANSAS CITY – The MACU men's basketball is headed back to the NAIA National Championship Tournament as the Evangels were selected as a No. 10 seed and will compete in the Wichita, Kansas bracket from Mar. 15-16.
Mid-America Christian earned one of the two automatic berths from the Sooner Athletic Conference after finishing as the league's tournament finalist, wrapping up bracket play with a 23-8 overall record and posting a 17-5 record against conference competition.
The Evangels are qualifying for their seventh NAIA Tournament in the last 10 years and the sixth time since Head Coach Josh Gamblin took the reigns of the program in 2015 and guided the Evangels to their first NAIA National Championship.
MACU enters the national tourney with a lot of momentum as the Evangels have won seven of their last eight games with their only loss coming to SAC Champion and SAC Tournament Champion, No. 2 Langston in a hard-fought 55-44 defeat in the conference championship game.
Leading the Evangels into the NAIA Tournament is All-SAC First Team senior forward Seth Hurd, who leads a balanced MACU scoring lineup with 373 points (12.4 ppg) on a stellar 56 percent shooting percentage while also averaging 4.1 rebounds per game. The Tulsa, Oklahoma native was also named to the SAC All-Tournament Team after finishing second on the team in scoring with 38 points (12.7 ppg) on 13-of-28 (46.4 percent) shooting and knocked down a blistering 12-for-14 (85.7 percent) from the free throw line.
Senior guard Mikel Henderson was also an All-SAC Second Team honoree while scoring team's second-most points (351, 11.3 ppg) while knocking down the most threes (64, 36.0 percent), is the team's best free throw shooter (61-76, 80.3 percent) and dishing out the second-most assists (75, 2.4 apg).
Senior guard Eddie Smith was also named the SAC Sixth Man of the Year as well as an All-SAC Honorable Mention and senior guard Jasiah Lewis was also tabbed to the league's Honorable Mention list while dishing out the third-most assists in the SAC (136, 4.4 apg).
The Evangels will tip-off the First Round of the NAIA Tournament on Friday, Mar. 15 against No. 7 seed Hastings (Neb.) at 8 p.m. inside the Garvey Center.
