Three Australian basketball players are on the rosters of the teams to qualify for the 64-team March Madness NCAA basketball tournament.
Thirteenth seeded Hawaii features Melbourners Jakob Cornelissen and Jack Purchase. Purchase is a senior forward and Cornelissen is a freshman guard. The team finished with 27 victories and 5 defeats during the season and probably deserves to be seeded higher than 13th, but the powers that decide these things probably felt that Hawaii did not have the strength of schedule that resulted in teams with lesser records being seeded higher.
As far as Australian players on a team with some decent prospects in the tournament are concerned, that would have to be Isaac Humphries of the Kentucky Wildcats. He has been a reliable player from the bench all season and recently contributed in the victory over Texas A&M that clinched the SEC Tournament Championship for Kentucky.
The Wildcats, under the tutelage of legendary college coach John Capilari, are seeded fourth in the tournament in the East Region. They compiled a 26 – 8 record for the season and will play 13th seed Stony Brook in the first round.
Kentucky made it to the Final Four in last year’s tournament before losing to Wisconsin.
