Although college basketball season has yet to begin, the University of New Mexico officially has a representative for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament for 2016-17.
The NCAA announced on Thursday morning that Paul Krebs, vice president for athletics at UNM, has been appointed to the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee. Krebs will be one of only 10 members chosen from universities across the nation.
The committee helps select the teams that will participate in the NCAA Tournament every spring. This year, the committee will be chaired by Mark Hollis, director of athletics at Michigan State University.
"It is an incredible honor to be appointed to represent my school and the Mountain West as a member of the men's basketball committee," Krebs said in a statement. "To have the opportunity to provide management to one of the truly special sporting events the world has to offer, while working with great professionals on the committee and from the national office, is a task I'm privileged to have.”
Krebs has been in his current role for Lobo sports since the spring of 2007, when he became a member of the Presidential Executive Cabinet. He began serving as athletics director a year before becoming vice president of the department. Krebs is currently the longest-serving athletics head in the Mountain West Conference.
The opportunity to join the committee presented itself due to previous candidate Jim Sterk leaving his position as director of athletics at San Diego University in August to take a similar job at the University of Missouri.
Krebs is not the first person from New Mexico to serve on the committee. Former Athletics Director Rudy Davalos was a member during the 1995-99 tourneys .
Krebs’ appointment to the committee is to be effective immediately. In the statement released on Thursday morning, Krebs expressed his excitement to begin.
“I am humbled to receive this opportunity and I'm anxious to get started," he said.
Isabel Gonzalez is a sports reporter for the Daily Lobo. She mainly covers men’s soccer and basketball. She can be reached at sports @dailylobo.com or on Twitter @cisabelg.
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