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<\/a>O’Brien<\/p><\/div>The 10-member NCAA Men\u2019s Division I Basketball Committee is responsible for selecting, seeding and bracketing the field for the NCAA Tournament. School and conference administrators are nominated by their conference, serve five-year terms, and represent a cross-section of the Division I membership.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am deeply honored to be appointed to represent The University of Toledo and the Mid-American Conference as a member of the NCAA Division I Men\u2019s Basketball Committee,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. \u201cI am humbled and grateful for the opportunity to join the tremendous group of people who serve on this very important committee. I especially want to thank the NCAA\u2019s senior vice president for basketball, Dan Gavitt, for this opportunity. I began my career in athletics as a basketball coach, so it is very exciting and gratifying for me to be a part of the committee that selects the field for one of the greatest sporting events in the world, the NCAA Division I Men\u2019s Basketball Championship.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re pleased to welcome Mike O\u2019Brien to the men\u2019s basketball committee,\u201d Gavitt said. \u201cMike is highly respected by his peers as an athletic director with a long tenure at Toledo and a deep history of NCAA committee service. Having started his career as a college assistant basketball coach, Mike has great passion and feel for the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien is in his 17th year as the athletic director at the University. During his tenure, he has helped shape the UT Athletics program into one of the very best in the Mid-American Conference. His tenure has seen unprecedented athletic and academic achievements of UT\u2019s student-athletes, as well as numerous ambitious capital projects that have elevated the University\u2019s status as one of the top mid-major athletic programs in the country.<\/p>\n
Under O\u2019Brien\u2019s watch, the Rockets have won or shared 33 league titles in nine different sports, including championships in football and women\u2019s soccer last season. The Rockets have won the Jacoby Trophy as the MAC\u2019s top women\u2019s athletic program twice in O\u2019Brien\u2019s reign, in 2011-12 and 2017-18. <\/p>\n
In the classroom, UT has produced overall department grade point averages above a 3.2 in each of the past seven semesters, and above a 3.1 in the past 19 consecutive semesters. Rocket student-athletes had a combined GPA of 3.266 in 2017-18, including a school record 3.290 in the 2017 fall semester. UT women\u2019s athletes won the MAC\u2019s Faculty Athletic Representatives Award for the highest combined GPA in 2017-18. UT has won the Mid-American Conference Institutional Academic Achievement Award, presented annually to the school with the highest grade point average, in four of the last six years. In 2011-12, UT won the Cartwright Award, given annually to the MAC athletic program with the highest degree of excellence in academics, athletics and citizenship.<\/p>\n
Capital projects secured during O\u2019Brien\u2019s tenure include the Charles A. Sullivan Athletic Complex construction and Savage Arena renovation project (2008); Fetterman Training Center construction (2010); Glass Bowl and Larimer Athletic Complex renovations (2016); as well as updates to soccer (2004), tennis (2006), and track and field (2010).<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien received national recognition for his accomplishments from the National Association of College Directors of Athletics at its convention in June 2012 when he was named the Football Bowl Subdivision Northeast Region Athletic Director of the Year. O\u2019Brien, who has the second-longest tenure among MAC athletic directors, previously served on the NCAA Division I Council from 2015 to 2018, where he worked on the Competition Oversight Committee. He also chairs the MAC Football Coaches Committee and was the conference\u2019s athletic director representative to the College Football Playoff Committee (formerly the Bowl Championship Series). He also has served as the chair of the Mid-American Conference Athletic Director\u2019s Committee and was a member of the NCAA Division I Football Issues Committee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mike O\u2019Brien, UT vice president and athletic director, is the newest member of the NCAA Division I Men\u2019s Basketball Committee, which is responsible for the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,56,1],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50935"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50935"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50950,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50935\/revisions\/50950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}