5 senior standouts looking to make the NCAA Tournament for the first time

Nearly every high school kid who signs a letter of intent with a Division I program does so with the hope that he will one day get to experience the feeling of being part of the NCAA Tournament. For many of these youngsters, however, the next four years come and go without that dream ever coming to fruition.

Undoubtedly, one of the best parts of March is always seeing the coaches, players and programs that have been in the game for a long time but have never taken the sport’s biggest stage change all that in a single moment. That being said, here are five seniors who are hoping to have removed themselves from the “never danced” club by the end of the month.

While Rice’s numbers have been as solid as most people expected during his time in Champaign, his team’s performance often has not been. The Illini raced out to a 13-2 start and a national ranking in 2013-14 before collapsing in Big Ten play and finishing their season in the NIT. Rice’s senior year has been similarly up-and-down, but the ups have been frequent enough to place Illinois squarely on the bubble heading into the final weekend of the regular season.

That may not have been the case had Rice, who leads the Illini in scoring (16.6 ppg) and rebounding (6.5 rpg), not come to the rescue on Wednesday night. In his final home game at the State Farm Center, Rice scored 17 of his game-high 23 points after halftime to help his team overcome a second-half deficit and avoid what would have been a catastrophic loss to Nebraska.

“I thought our seniors had that look in their eye where they weren’t gonna let us lose,” head coach John Groce said afterward.

For the team’s most important senior, that look kept alive his last chance to see his team’s name called on Selection Sunday.

Sykes has done virtually everything there is to do at the college level -- score more than 2,000 career points, win back-to-back conference Player of the Year awards, dunk on almost everyone in the country -- except play in the NCAA Tournament. His Green Bay team has been ousted in the Horizon League semis in each of the past two seasons, including a stunning overtime loss a year ago when they were the tournament’s No. 1 seed and overwhelming favorite.

The Phoenix are the No. 2 seed in this week’s Horizon League tournament, which will begin for Sykes and company on Saturday, when they take the court in the semifinals. Two wins will get Green Bay into the Big Dance for the first time since 1996, and Sykes into the bigger spotlight he’s spent the past four years earning.

That all figures to change in a couple of weeks. Staten has been the best player on a WVU team that has surprisingly won 22 games, and figures to be somewhere between a 4-6 seed on Selection Sunday. It should be a handsome reward for a player who surprised many by returning to school for his senior season.

Anthony likely has more work to do than the other four players on this list when it comes to getting their respective teams into the field of 68, but uphill battles have never bothered the 5’8, 140-pound star.

Anthony has averaged double figures in points in all four of his collegiate seasons, he’s widely regarded as one of the quickest players in the country, and earlier this season he became Richmond’s all-time leader in made three-pointers. But Anthony has never danced, a fact likely made more difficult to swallow when you consider that the Spiders were coming off back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances when he arrived on campus in the fall of 2011.

Richmond has been unpredictable for most of Anthony’s senior season, but they’re playing their best basketball at the perfect time. A win over Saint Louis on Saturday would be their sixth straight, and could potentially earn them one of the four double byes in the Atlantic 10 Tournament, where Anthony and company will be a trendy pick to make a run.

Harrison is the most prominent member of a senior class that has seen nothing but bad luck since it arrived to play for a St. John’s program coming off its first NCAA Tournament appearance in nearly a decade. Instead of building on that momentum, the Red Storm has won a total of just two postseason games since -- one in the Big East Tournament and another in the NIT.

Not that Harrison deserves the blame for that. The two-time All-Big East selection has never averaged fewer than 16.8 ppg in a season, and has been the one constant for a program that has seen more controversy and turnover than it could have ever imagined four years ago.

Though his team sat even more squarely on the bubble then than it does today, Harrison was adamant after the Red Storm’s home finale on February 28 (an 81-70 win over Georgetown) that his team would not be returning to Carnesecca Arena for the NIT.

“This is our last game there,” Harrison said. “It’s our last game there. That’s it.”

And after being asked if that statement was a guarantee?

“I’m not going to say we’re not going to make it.”