Washington State men earn No. 4 seed in NIT, will host Santa Clara in first round

After they were knocked out of the Pac-12 tournament on Thursday, the Washington State Cougars returned to Pullman and immediately began to prepare for the National Invitation Tournament.

“We’re going to practice and assume we’re in and be ready to go and hopefully not be let down,” WSU coach Kyle Smith said after his team’s 75-65 loss to UCLA in the quarterfinal round of the conference tourney in Las Vegas.

On Sunday, the NIT committee didn’t disappoint.

WSU was picked as a No. 4 seed and will host Santa Clara (21-11) of the West Coast Conference in a first-round matchup Tuesday. Tipoff is slated for 8 p.m. at Beasley Coliseum. The game will be broadcast on ESPNU.

The Cougars are ranked No. 61 in the NCAA’s NET rankings and finished the regular season tied for fifth in the Pac-12 Conference standings at 11-9 – their best Pac-12 record since 2007-08.

The program has been trending upward steadily over three seasons with Smith in charge, and now it’s set to compete in its first postseason tournament since taking part in the CBI in 2012.

WSU has participated in the NIT five times, most recently in 2011, when the Cougars made a run to the semifinal round and fell to Wichita State at Madison Square Garden in New York.

“It’d mean a lot – it’s only happened five times,” Smith said. “It’s hard to get in there. … The teams that win their league (in the regular season) and don’t win their conference tournament get auto bids, so that squeezes the field down. It’s a tough tournament.”