Oklahoma’s men’s basketball team will enter the 2008 Dick’s Sporting Goods NIT Season Tip-Off as the No. 2 seed and host the four-team South Regional Nov. 17-18. The bracket and schedule for the 16-team event was finalized Tuesday.

The Sooners will host No. 16 seed Mississippi Valley State in first-round action Nov. 17, at 8 p.m. An NCAA tournament team last year, Mississippi Valley State finished 17-16 and went 12-6 in the Southwestern Athletic Conference.

If OU beats Mississippi Valley State, it will play the winner of the game between No. 5 seed Davidson and No. 12 seed James Madison at 8:30 p.m., Nov. 18.

Davidson, which lost to eventual national champion Kansas by two points in the Elite Eight of last year’s NCAA tournament, posted a 29-7 overall record in 2007-08 and went 20-0 in Southern Conference play. The Wildcats return preseason first-team All-American Stephen Curry, the nation’s leading returning scorer (25.9 ppg). James Madison finished with a 13-17 record last season and posted a 5-13 mark in Colonial Athletic Association games.

If the Sooners win the South Regional, they’ll advance to New York’s Madison Square Garden for games during the week of Thanksgiving (Wednesday, Nov. 26, at 6 or 8 p.m. and Friday, Nov. 28, at 12:30 or 2:30 p.m.

No. 1 seed Purdue is host of the North Regional (also features Georgia, Loyola Chicago, Eastern Michigan), No. 3 seed Arizona will host the West Regional (UAB, Santa Clara and Florida Atlantic) and No. 4 seed Boston College will host the East Regional (St. John’s, Cornell and Loyola, Md.). OU is on the same side of the bracket as Arizona, making for a potential semifinals matchup in New York.

John Shinn

366-3536

jshinn@normantranscript.com