Washington, Oregon Selected For 32-Team Nit

North Carolina State and Texas Christian, whose surprising conference tournament runs ended in championship game losses, headed the 32-team selected Sunday for the NIT.

Washington and Oregon were selected from the Pac-10 Conference.

The tournament opens Wednesday with Iona (22-7) at UConn (14-14), Drexel (22-8) at Bradley (16-12), Nevada-Reno (20-8) at Fresno State (20-11), Washington (17-10) at defending NIT champion Nebraska (17-13), Florida State (16-11) at Syracuse (19-12), George Washington (16-13) at Michigan State (16-11), Southwest Missouri State (24-8) at North Carolina State (16-14), Bowling Green (22-8) at West Virginia (19-9), Oral Roberts (21-6) at Notre Dame (14-13), Alabama-Birmingham (18-13) at TCU (21-12), Northern Arizona (21-6) at Arkansas (15-12), New Orleans (22-6) at Pittsburgh (17-14), Oregon (17-10) at Hawaii (20-7) and Memphis (16-14) at UNLV (20-9).

The remaining first-round games are set for Thursday with Miami, Fla. (16-12) at Michigan (18-11) and Tulane (20-10) at Oklahoma State (18-12).

The NIT will be played at campus and neutral sites for the first three rounds, with the semifinal and finals at Madison Square Garden on March 24 and 26.

Fontaine, Daniel make All-Pac-10

California guard Ed Gray, who averaged 24.8 points per game to lead the Pacific-10 Conference, was named Player of the Year on Saturday in a vote by 10 conference coaches.

Arizona guard Mike Bibby was named Freshman of the Year and California’s Ben Braun was named Pac-10 Coach of the Year.

Others named to the All-Pac 10 team were:

Toby Bailey, 6-5 junior guard, UCLA;

Stais Boseman, 6-4 senior guard-forward, USC;

Michael Dickerson, 6-5 junior forward, Arizona;

Isaac Fontaine, 6-3 senior guard, Washington State;

Brevin Knight, 5-10 senior guard, Stanford;

Jelani McCoy, 6-10 sophomore center, UCLA;

Charles O’Bannon, 6-5 senior forward, UCLA;

Mark Sanford, 6-8 junior forward, Washington;

Jeremy Veal, 6-3 junior guard, Arizona State;

Kenya Wilkins, 5-10 senior guard, Oregon.

Honorable mention: Mike Bibby, Arizona; Jamie Booker, Washington; Carlos Daniel, Washington State, Cameron Dollar, UCLA; J.R. Henderson, UCLA; Roderick Rhodes, USC; Miles Simon, Arizona; Tim Young, Stanford.

Hackers get into NCAA home page

Someone hacked into the NCAA’s Internet home page Sunday and temporarily replaced it with racial slurs, but officials were able to divert web surfers to the proper page.

The World Wide Web site normally featuring the NCAA and links to other similar sites was abruptly changed early Sunday evening with a page titled “Anti-ncaa.” Below it was an encircled fist and the words “White Power.” Another racial slur used more extreme language.

Later, the offending page was replaced with a page that read “Basketball sucks? Badminton Rules!” and under the counter its fractured grammar read, “Stop commercialization of the Internet stops here.”

The invading page appeared soon after the NCAA announced its pairings for its basketball tournament.

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