After each recording 20-plus win seasons, Houston and UCF each earned bids to the National Invitation Tournament (NIT), the NCAA announced on Sunday night.
The additions mark four postseason bids for American Athletic Conference men’s basketball teams. The first three rounds of the NIT are played at campus sites of the higher seed. The semifinals and finals will be played at Madison Square Garden in New York City on March 28 and 30.
For the second straight season, Houston will compete in the NIT when it plays host to Akron at 7:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday. The game will be played inside Texas Southern’s Health & Physical Education Arena.
The Cougars, who will compete as a No. 2 seed, earned their second straight postseason berth after finishing 21-10 overall and 12-6 for a third-place finish in the regular-season standings in the American Athletic Conference. Entering Wednesday’s game, Houston has won eight of its last 11 games.
The Cougars are led by one of the most explosive backcourts in the nation. Junior guard Rob Gray leads the Cougars and the American Athletic Conference with 20.3 points per game, while senior guard Damyean Dotson is one of only two players to rank among the league’s top-11 leaders in both scoring and rebounding.
Both Cougars were named to the All-American Athletic Conference First Team, making Houston the only school with two First-Team honorees.
This will be the first time the Cougars have hosted a game in Texas Southern’s H&PE Arena. The team is scheduled to play several games in this facility during the 2017-18 season as Hofheinz Pavilion undergoes a $60 million renovation to become the Fertitta Center for the 2018-19 campaign.
For the first time in five years, the UCF men's basketball team is back in postseason play. Following an impressive regular season and American Athletic Conference Semifinals appearance, the Knights (21-11) will participate in the National Invitation Tournament for the second time ever.
For the first time in program history UCF will host an NIT game. The fourth seeded Knights will welcome fifth seeded Colorado (19-14) to CFE Arena Wednesday at 7 p.m. ET with coverage on ESPN3.
UCF last appeared in the NIT in 2011-12 after a 21-9 regular season.
This season's Knights nearly doubled their most American Athletic Conference victories ever, winning 11 games in league play and earning a first round bye in the conference's tournament for the first time. Fourth seeded UCF defeated fifth seeded Memphis 84-54 in the quarterfinals, before falling to eventual champion SMU 70-59 in the semis.
In his first season at the helm, UCF head coach Johnny Dawkins has led the Knights to nine more wins than they recorded last year.
With a win on Wednesday, the Knights would advance to take on the winner of No. 1 seed Illinois State and No. 8 seed UC Irvine. That game would be played between March 16 and 20.