For the third time in four seasons, Idaho's men's basketball team will enter postseason play under coach Don Verlin when the Vandals host UC Santa Barbara in the first round of the CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Cowan Spectrum in Moscow.

It will be the first meeting between the two teams since 2005, when both were members of the Big West Conference.

Idaho is 18-13 overall after a third-place finish in the Western Athletic Conference, while UC Santa Barbara went 20-10 overall and tied for second in the Big West. The Gauchos lost to top-seeded Long Beach State in Sunday's Big West Conference Championship Game.

Tickets to Wednesday's game are $10 for all seats. Idaho basketball season ticket holders have the option of Club Room seating for $10 each. University of Idaho students will need to purchase tickets.

"A chance to host in our facility is great and having a home game tells you what kind of season we had and what kind of respect we're getting from people in the basketball community," Verlin said. "I also appreciate our university for stepping up and allowing us to host a game."

The Gauchos feature three-time All-Big West first team selection Orlando Johnson, a 6-5 senior guard who averages 19.7 points, 5.8 rebounds and 3.0 assists per game. Senior guard James Nunnally, a second-team All-Big West pick, adds 15.7 points, 6.0 rebounds and 2.7 rebounds per game.

Wednesday's game marks Idaho's third appearance in the CIT under Verlin. The team is 1-2 overall in CIT play. In 2009, the Vandals hosted Drake in a 69-67 first-round victory, then fell in the quarterfinal at Pacific, 69-59. The Vandals lost at San Francisco in the first round last season, 81-73.

In its fourth season, the CIT expanded this season to 32 teams. The tournament will consist of five rounds with each game being played at on-campus sites, determined by seeding. The championship game will be broadcast live on Fox College Sports on March 28.

WSU's season continues: Washington State (15-16) was selected as one of 16 teams to participate in the fifth annual College Basketball Invitational and will travel to the University of San Francisco (20-13) on Tuesday. Tip is set for 7 p.m. and the game will be televised on HDNet. HDNet, which is owned and was founded by Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, reaches in excess of 23 million homes.

This marks WSU's 12th postseason appearance and its fifth in the last six years. Last season the Cougars reached the semifinals of the National Invitation Tournament.

The winner of the game between the Cougars and the Dons will face the winner of North Dakota State at Wyoming. The tourney concludes with a best-of-three championship series March 26 and 28, and March 30 if necessary.

Grizzlies to play Badgers: Montana (25-6) received a No. 13 seed and will face No. 4 Wisconsin (24-9) on Thursday (11:10 a.m. PDT, TNT) in an NCAA East Region second-round game at Albuquerque, N.M.

Montana is making its ninth NCAA tournament appearance. The Grizzlies, who won both the Big Sky Conference regular-season and tournament titles, have won 14 straight games, a mark that is tied for the longest winning streak in the nation.

Wisconsin lost to eventual champion Michigan State in the semifinals of the Big Ten tournament.

Huskies left out of NCAAs: Lorenzo Romar knew what the outcome was probably going to be to the point of being bluntly realistic with those around him following Washington's stunning loss to Oregon State in the quarterfinals of the Pac-12 Conference tournament.

"I've been accused of being a pessimist more these last three days than I have in the last 10 years," Romar said.

Romar's growing fear became truth on Sunday when Washington, the regular-season champions of the Pac-12, was left out of the 68-team field for the NCAA tournament, making the Huskies a rare footnote and trivia fact in the annals of tournament selections.

It's the first time a regular-season champion of a traditional power-six conference - SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, Big East, ACC, Pac-12 - was not selected for the tournament, and the first time an outright regular-season champion or co-champion of the Pac-12, Pac-10, Pac-8 or Pacific Coast Conference failed to be chosen for the tournament since the 1950s.

"We had control of the situation and we lost it," Romar said on a teleconference Sunday afternoon.

Washington will enter the NIT as one of four No. 1 seeds and will host Texas-Arlington in the opening round on Tuesday night with the winner facing either Northwestern or Akron in the second round. The Huskies' bracket includes rival Oregon and the NIT field has four Pac-12 schools.

Despite computer numbers - RPI and strength of schedule - that pulled on the Huskies, it seemed unfathomable that the regular-season champ of the traditional power would be left out of the tournament. But the Huskies did little over the past week to show it deserved the acknowledgment.

First, the Huskies backed into the outright regular-season title when they missed a chance to claim it themselves by losing at UCLA. They won just their second outright title in 59 years when Stanford beat California a day after the Huskies loss to the Bruins.

Then Washington came out flat and uninspired against ninth-seeded Oregon State in the tourney quarterfinals on Thursday and eventually lost 86-84. Romar believes with a win over the Beavers, or in any of the Huskies' earlier losses, Washington would be going to its fourth straight NCAA tournament.

But the selection committee had other thoughts. Washington wasn't even among the first six teams out of the tournament. Its RPI numbers were damaging: no wins against the top 50, two losses to teams 100 or higher and an average RPI win of 191.

"Our guys are very, very disappointed because I don't think after winning the conference outright, they couldn't see any way we would not be in this tournament in their minds," Romar said.

Washington's biggest problem was the lack of a quality win despite a non-conference schedule that provided opportunities. The Huskies lost at Saint Louis and in neutral-site games in New York against ranked teams Marquette and Duke. They blew a late lead and lost at Western Athletic Conference regular-season champion Nevada and then lost at home to South Dakota State.

But the ugliest losses for the Huskies were the season finale loss to UCLA and the loss to Oregon State that gave the Huskies a pair of losses to teams with RPIs above 100.

"The selection process is done a lot by numbers; feed information to the computer and let it spit out the field of 68," Romar said. "If that is the case then your numbers have to be right."

Washington will make its sixth appearance in the NIT - the Huskies are 3-5 all-time - and first since 1997. The first three rounds are played on campus before the semifinals and finals at Madison Square Garden in New York on March 27 and 29.