RIDER GAMEDAY

Who: Rider (22-9) at Oregon (22-12) When: Tuesday, 10 p.m., Matthew Knight Arena, Eugene, Ore.

TV/ Radio: ESPN3/ 107.7 FM The Bronc Last Time Out: Rider lost to Saint Peter’s, 66-55, in the MAAC quarterfinals; Oregon lost to Southern California, 74-54, in the Pac-12 semifinals

Series History: First meeting Background: The odds are certainly stacked against the Broncs, who were always going to be underdogs before the NIT selection committee opted to send them across the country for a first-round game on Tuesday night. Rider has one of the longest travel distances (nearly 3,000 miles) of any team that qualified for a postseason tournament. The Broncs ended up charting a flight out of the Trenton-Mercer airport on Monday afternoon — better than the original plan of leaving at 3 a.m. for the airport to fly into Portland and bus to Eugene — to help with the travel burden.

NIT Forecast: Rider is making its second appearance all-time in the NIT. Its only other trip was in 1998 when it lost to Penn State in the first round. The NIT features 32 teams and gives automatic berths to regular-season champions who don’t win their conference tournaments. The Broncs qualified via the MAAC regular-season title. If Rider, which is a No. 6 seed, upsets thirdseeded Oregon, it gets the winner of second-seeded Marquette and seventhseeded Harvard. If both the Broncs and Crimson were to win, that game would be at Alumni Gymnasium. The other two pairings in this section of the bracket include Hampton at Notre Dame and Temple at Penn State.

Scouting Oregon: The Ducks are in the NIT one year after making a run to the Final Four. Dana Altman’s club returned only two players — Payton Pritchard and Keith Smith — who played in the national semifinal against North Carolina. Pritchard, a 6-2 sophomore, averages a team-high 14.2 points per game and shoots 41.1 percent from beyond the arc. Elijah Brown (13.8), Troy Brown (11.7) and MiKyle McIntosh (11.4) also score in double figures. Rider wants to play quickly (ranking ninth in adjusted temp, according to KenPom) and this should be a great test against a high-level opponent. Oregon doesn’t play nearly as fast, but the Ducks limit opponents to 71.4 points on 42.8 percent shooting. For comparison’s sake, the Broncs score 81.7 points per game (30th nationally) and shoot 46.5 percent from the field.

— Kyle Franko