THE NIT : USC Lands NIT Berth at Fresno

The call might not have been an invitation to the NCAA tournament, but USC was not complaining Sunday night when the Trojans gained a berth in the National Invitation Tournament for the second consecutive year.

The Trojans, who won their final four games of the season and five of their last six, will play at Fresno State at 9 p.m. Wednesday in the first round of the NIT.

“We’re very excited about the opportunity to play in the NIT against a quality program from a quality league,” USC Coach George Raveling said. “While 95% of the schools are sitting home right now, we’ll have an opportunity to play on national television at a time when we’re playing with consistency and on a little bit of a roll.”

Fresno State, which lost to Brigham Young in the second round of the Western Athletic Conference Tournament, finished the regular season at 19-10.

Only four weeks ago, USC looked like a team headed anywhere but a postseason tournament with an 11-10 overall record and a disappointing 4-8 mark in the Pacific 10 Conference.

Then came the turnaround. In a span of six days, the Trojans ended February and began March as the hottest team in the Pac-10 by defeating favored California and UCLA at the Sports Arena, before sweeping both Oregon and Oregon State this past weekend.

“The key was that we wanted to finish the season strong,” USC senior Mark Boyd said. “Once we started winning, it got to the point where we did not want our season to end.”

The winner between Fresno State and the Trojans will play the winner of Arizona State (15-12), which ended the season by defeating Pac-10 champion Arizona, and Brigham Young (21-9), the runner-up in the WAC Tournament championship game.

The Bulldogs start an all-senior lineup headed by 6-foot-3 guard Carl Ray Harris, who averaged 21.5 points a game this season, and forward Seth Marshall, who averaged 13.6 points and 4.8 rebounds.

USC and Fresno State have not played in 65 years, but the Trojans own a 2-0 record in the series with consecutive victories over the Bulldogs in 1928 and 1929.

A key this time might be the play of Lorenzo Orr, a junior forward who carried the Trojans to consecutive NIT victories over Nevada Las Vegas and Pepperdine last season, before coming up short at Minnesota, the eventual champion.

“We’re definitely a different team than we were earlier in the season,” said Orr, who was selected to the all-Pac-10 team last week. “Instead of playing not to lose, we are now playing to win.”

First-Round NIT Pairings

WEDNESDAY

DePaul (16-11) at Northwestern (14-13); Vanderbilt (16-11) at Oklahoma (15-12); USC (16-11) at Fresno State (19-10); Murray State (23-5) at Bradley (21-7); Tulane (17-10) at Evansville (21-10); Miami, Ohio (19-10) at Xavier, Ohio (20-7); North Carolina Charlotte (16-12) at Duquesne (16-12); Texas A&M; (19-10) at New Orleans (19-9).

THURSDAY

Manhattan (19-10) at Old Dominion (20-9); Georgia Tech (16-12) at Siena (21-7); Canisius (22-6) at Villanova (15-12); Southern Mississippi (15-13) at Clemson (16-15); Davidson (22-7) at West Virginia (16-11); Gonzaga (21-7) at Stanford (17-10); Mississippi State (18-10) at Kansas State (17-12); Arizona State (15-12) at Brigham Young (21-9).