After it was made official Sunday that the BYU Cougars did not make the NCAA men’s basketball tournament’s field of 68, where the Cougars would end up in the National Invitation Tournament became the next question.
On Sunday night, it was revealed that the Cougars are a 2-seed in the 32-team field and will host the Long Beach State 49ers in the first round.
Then as a minor surprise, the last team announced in the field was the Utah State Aggies, who will be a 4-seed and host the Oregon Ducks in the first round.
Utah State and Oregon will play Tuesday at 7 p.m. MT at the Spectrum in Logan, and 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 host the first-round games, and games will be played at home sites until the semifinals and finals at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
For BYU, the trip to the NIT is perhaps seen as a disappointment after they started the season 17-4 before a four-game losing streak, and then the Cougars were eliminated by the San Francisco Dons in the West Coast Conference tournament.
Should BYU beat Long Beach State (the regular season champion of the Big West Conference before Cal State Fullerton won the conference tournament), it will face the winner of the contest between 3-seed Saint Louis and Northern Iowa in the second round.
As for the Aggies, they finished all the way back in seventh in the Mountain West Conference and then lost in the second round of the conference tournament to the Colorado State Rams, but they’ll head to the NIT after the top four teams made the NCAA Tournament and UNLV and Fresno State will not be in the NIT.
Utah State will face an Oregon team that was expected to be very good this season but disappointed. Should the Aggies win their first-round matchup, they will face the winner of 1-seed Texas A&M and Akron in the second round.
Texas A&M, also nicknamed the Aggies, was on the bubble for the NCAA Tournament after making it all the way to the SEC championship game.
Elsewhere, the SUU T-Birds announced Sunday that they will play in The Basketball Classic (formerly known as the CIT), with their first-round opponent to be announced on Monday.
Like the NIT, The Basketball Classic will have a 32-team field. All games will be played at campus sites, with the championship game scheduled for March 31.
All games will be streamed on ESPN+.
The T-Birds have a record of 20-11. It marks the first time in program history they have reached the 20-win mark two years in a row.