The Cougars did not earn an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament as the 68-team field was announced Sunday on CBS. Later in the evening, they earned the No. 2 seed in the National Invitation Tournament.
Pope said there’s no player on the team who has opted out of participating in the tournament. Seneca Knight is the only one who won’t play, but that’s because he recently had surgery on his hand.“I just don’t understand the concept of not wanting to go compete,” Pope said. “That’s what we live for. I think that’s how our guys are built.”
The Cougars had an up-and-down season. They started already missing senior center Richard Harward as he recovered from a heart condition, but still managed to win their first seven nonconference games — including aAn upset loss to Utah Valley also brought the end of senior Gavin Baxter’s season after he tore the ACL in one of his knees. Not long afterward, Harward announced his heart condition forced him to.
Those two injuries forced the Cougars to change their playing identity on a couple of occasions. They didn’t win more than four consecutive games for the remainder of the regular season — including the WCC Tournament — and suffered a four-game losing streak from which they never seemed to bounce back.
Elsewhere in the state, the Utah State Aggies earned the No. 4 seed in the NIT and will host Oregon on Tuesday at 8 p.m.
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