Pepperdine Faces New Mexico in NIT, Long Beach Must Travel to Stanford

Pepperdine and Cal State Long Beach missed out on the NCAA sweepstakes Sunday but landed spots in the National Invitation Tournament.

The Waves (17-12) will travel to New Mexico (20-13) Thursday night, while the 49ers (17-11) will play at Stanford (20-11) on Friday night in first-round games.

The NIT gets under way Wednesday night with Old Dominion (18-11) at Ohio State (16-12).

The tournament will be held at campus sites until the semifinals and final in New York March 29-30.

In other Thursday games, Louisiana Tech (21-8) visits Arkansas Little Rock (24-6), Georgia Southern (24-6) is at Georgia (19-15), Connecticut (15-14) is at West Virginia (18-13), Fordham (18-14) goes to Houston (17-12), Utah (19-10) is at Evansville (20-7), Siena (23-5) visits Boston College (15-13) and Santa Clara (20-10) is at Oregon (15-13).

On Friday night, Virginia Commonwealth (21-11) goes to Marshall (24-7), Tennessee (16-12) is at Middle Tennessee (21-10), Northeast Louisiana (21-8) travels to Arkansas State (19-13), New Orleans (20-10) is at Colorado State (18-12), Illinois State (18-12) goes to Cleveland State (21-7) and Clemson (14-14) is at Southern Mississippi (18-10).