Practice has begun in Kansas City for the Campbellsville University Tigers' eighth appearance in the NAIA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament. Campbellsville took the court at Rockhurst University at noon CDT Monday for its first practice since arriving in the BBQ Capital of the World on Sunday.

"I think it took us about 15 minutes to shake off the trip," CU head coach Keith Adkins said. "It took us a few minutes to get through one of our drills, and that's not a good thing, but after that one little segment I thought we got into a pretty good practice and got into our scouting report really well."

Adkins said a large part of this week's focus has been on defense and working out its scouting report of first round opponent Fresno Pacific University (Calif.) in live situations. The Tigers spent more than a half hour of Monday's practice running through live situations. It gave honorary coach Jim Sloss, owner of Kansas City Sign Pro, his first look at CU since its Fab Four run two years ago.

Following practice, Sloss treated the Tigers to the local cuisine with a trip to RJ's Bob-Be-Que Shack in Mission, Kan., the same place he treated the 2005-06 team during his first year serving as a NAIA honorary coach, a program established by to NAIA to assign local business leaders a team for the week.

"It's a great program the NAIA has started, and they've had it around for a long time. It's a way of helping teams feel more comfortable. Not only do they provide a meal for us, but they give us advice on places to go and places to stay away from. We've been fortunate to have some good ones over the years and we're real fortunate to have a repeat one this year," Adkins said. "Jim was really good for us that first time, and we won a game (CU's first tournament win in program history), so maybe he's a good luck charm."

The Tigers (26-7) will have one more practice session Tuesday morning at Park University before taking on Fresno Pacific (24-8) of California in the first round of the NAIA Tournament Wednesday at 12:30 p.m. CDT.

Fans can catch the action by numerous forms of media. Online, a free radio broadcast will be streamed on WTCOSports.com, while a live video broadcast will be available by JumpTV for $9.95 per day or $39.95 for the tournament at WatchNAIA.com. In Campbellsville, WLCU-TV4 will televise JumpTV's broadcast on Comcast channel 10 , while the radio broadcast can be found on ESPN 1450 AM in Campbellsville and Greensburg. Live statistics will also be provided by the NAIA.

For complete coverage of the Tiger basketball team's trip to Kansas City, visit the team's tournament page by clicking here.

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