The Kent State Golden Flashes men's basketball team represents Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, United States. The Golden Flashes compete in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) at the Division I level as a member of the Mid-American Conference (MAC) East Division. The team was founded in 1913 and played their first intercollegiate game in January 1915. They joined the Mid-American Conference in 1951 and have played in the East division since the MAC went to the divisional format in 1997. Home games are held at the Memorial Athletic and Convocation Center, which opened in 1950 and is one of the oldest arenas in college basketball. Rob Senderoff was hired as head coach in 2011, the 24th coach in the program's history. The Flashes gained national attention in the late 1990s and early 2000s after earning their first bid to the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament in 1999. Two years later, Kent State picked up their first tournament win, followed the next year by their run to the Elite Eight in 2002 as a 10th seed where the Flashes finished the season ranked 12th nationally. The 2002 Golden Flashes also set a team record with 30 wins along with a MAC single-season record of 17 conference wins. Through the 2016–17 season, Kent State has six total appearances in the NCAA tournament, the most recent being in 2017, along with eight appearances in the National Invitation Tournament (NIT), and four in the CollegeInsider.com Tournament (CIT). In MAC play, the Flashes have six regular-season titles, nine East division titles, and six MAC tournament championships. History The men's basketball team is Kent State's oldest collegiate team, founded in 1913 during the first fall semester at the new Kent State Normal School campus. The team was organized, though only five men were enrolled out of the initial enrollment of 140 at the beginning of the term, as the new school was a teacher training college and thus had a predominately female student body. More men would arrive at the school in the coming weeks. They played and won their first game against Kent High School and competed against local company and high school teams for that first season, going 7–2. During the following season, Kent State played its first intercollegiate game, a 56–6 loss to Otterbein College, on January 22, 1915. An additional intercollegiate game, a 54–18 home loss to Muskingum College, was