After it was officially announced Sunday that the BYU Cougars were out of the 68 NCAA men’s basketball tournaments where the Cougars would make it to the national invitational tournament, the next question was.
It was revealed Sunday night that the Cougars are second on a roster of 32 teams and will host the Long Beach State 49ers in the first round.
Then, as a little surprise, the last team announced on the field was the Utah Aggis, who will be the 4th seed and host the Oregon Ducks in the first round.
Utah State and Oregon State will play Tuesday at 7:00 pm PT at the Spectrum in Logan, while BYU and Long Beach State will play Wednesday at the same time at the Marriott Center in Provo.
The top four seeds in each quadrant of the bracket will play in the first round, with games played at home until the semi-finals and finals at Madison Square Garden in New York.
For BYU, a trip to the NIT may have been seen as a disappointment after they started the season 17-4 ahead of a four-loss streak and then the Cougars were eliminated by the San Francisco Dons in the West Coast Conference tournament.
If BYU beats Long Beach State (Big West Conference regular season champion before California State Fullerton won the conference tournament), it will face the winner of the St. Louis-Northern Iowa contest in the second round.
As for the Aggies, they finished seventh in the Mountain West Conference and then lost in the second round of the conference tournament to the Colorado State Rams, but they will go to the NIT after the top four teams come out on top. The NCAA Tournament, as well as UNLV and Fresno State, will not be included in the NIT.
Utah State will face a team from Oregon that was expected to be very good this season but disappointed. If the Aggies win their matchup in the first round, they will face the winner of Texas A&M and first-place Akron in the second round.
Texas A&M, also nicknamed the Aggies, was on the bubble for the NCAA tournament after going all the way to the SEC championship game.
Elsewhere, SUU T-Birds announced on Sunday that they would play in The Basketball Classic (formerly known as CIT) with their first-round opponent to be announced on Monday.
Like the NIT, the Basketball Classic will feature 32 teams. All games will be played on campus, with the championship game scheduled for March 31st.
All games will be streamed on ESPN+.
The T-Birds have a 20-11 record. This marks the first time in the program’s history that they have reached the 20-win mark for two consecutive years.