GREELEY -- Northern Colorado men’s basketball is headed back to Vegas.

The field for the 10th annual Las Vegas Invitational was officially announced this week, and head coach B.J. Hill’s Bears are on the guest list for a pair of games that will be played Friday and Saturday, Nov. 26 and 27, at the Orleans Arena.

 

National-powerhouse Kansas and historically strong Arizona will also be at the party, along with Santa Clara, Ohio, Bethune-Cookman, Valparaiso and Texas A&M- Corpus Christi.

 

Northern Colorado, which took part in a similar Christmas-week tournament at the Orleans two seasons ago as part of the Las Vegas Classic, will play this year in tournament-associated nonconference road games at Arizona (Sunday, Nov. 21) and at Santa Clara (Monday, Nov. 23) before taking on either Bethune-Cookman, Valparaiso or Texas A&M-Corpus Christi on Friday and Saturday.

 

The remainder of the Bears’ 2010-11 schedule will be released later this summer.

 

“Playing in this event is going to be a great thing for Northern Colorado basketball,” Hill said Wednesday from the recruiting trail. “Getting to play against programs like Arizona, with all its history, and Santa Clara, which has had a lot of success, too, will be a great thing for our guys. And then, to get the exposure of playing in a city like Las Vegas is going to be a great jumpstart for our program as we move on through this season.”

 

Northern Colorado is coming off one of its best seasons in school history after finishing with a school-record 25 wins (25-8) and making an appearance in the quarterfinals of the CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament.

 

Hill, who was promoted to Northern Colorado’s top spot in April after previous coach Tad Boyle took the same job at Colorado, says he’s excited to take his program on the road for an early-season weeklong set of games. The camaraderie that will be built on the trip, from Tucson to San Francisco to Sin City, will be crucial as the Bears look to build on last season’s historic effort.

 

The flame for last season’s explosive run started on a similar weeklong trip to Hawai’i, where Northern Colorado won the historic Rainbow Classic and never looked back in a season that saw them win 24 regular-season games, which was the most by a Big Sky Conference team since Weber State won that many in 2002-03.

“I’m excited to be on the road with our guys for a week straight and to get to see how we match up against some really good competition,” Hill said. “That whole week is going to be huge for our program. We’ll get to come together as a unit, spend Thanksgiving together, and give ourselves some great tests before we start into Big Sky Conference play.

 

“And we’re also going to have a chance to compete and win some games. This is a good field, and we think we match-up well with the programs we’re scheduled to face.”