No. 5 SFA (27-4, 16-2 Southland) at No. 4 Stanford (18-14, 9-9 Pac 12)

Tuesday, March 19, 2013 • 10 p.m., Central
Maples Pavillion (7,329) • Palo Alto, Calif.
TV: ESPN2 and WatchESPN
Live Stats: www.GoStanford.com

Stephen F. Austin Release (PDF)

Story Lines:
• Despite falling in the finals of the Southland Conference tournament, Stephen F. Austin's regular-season championship garnered them an automatic berth in the NIT and the Lumberjacks will kick off their postseason as a No. 5 seed at No. 4 Stanford, the defending NIT champion, on Tuesday at 10 p.m., Central, at Maples Pavilion. The game will be televised on ESPN2 and the Lumberjacks will enter the tournament with the least amount of losses of any team in the field. Dave Flemming and NBA Hall of Famer Bill Walton will have the call.

• The Cardinal are seeking to become the third back-to-back NIT champions in the tournament history, and the first since South Carolina won consecutive championships in 2005 and 2006. Stanford is 3-1 all-time vs. teams from the Southland Conference, most recently with a 91-52 win over Central Arkansas last year in Palo Alto.

Last Time Out: SFA got 23 points from Desmond Haymon, but the second-seeded Northwestern State Demons did just enough in the second half and squeezed out a 68-66 win over the Lumberjacks in the championship game of the Southland Conference tournament on Saturday. The Lumberjacks held a narrow 35-34 lead at halftime, but were held without a 3-point bucket in the second half and hit just 14 of 23 foul shots for the game, while the Demons followed a 19-point effort from tournament MVP Shamir Davis to its first tournament title since 2006. 

Up Next: The winner of Tuesday's matchup will take on the winner of No. 1 Alabama and No. 8 Northeastern in the tournament's second round. Date, time and location of the second round matchup are yet to be announced.

Quick Hits:
• The Lumberjacks will be looking to extend their streak of 63 consecutive games of holding opponents under 70 points. SFA went all of 2011-12 without allowing 70 points to an opponent and has done so all 31 games of this season.

• Danny Kaspar moved into second all-time in career wins at SFA on Friday with his 246th win.

• The Lumberjacks are making their third appearance in the NIT and first since 2008 when it fell at UMass. SFA is 1-4 all-time in postseason tournaments (NCAA and NIT).

• Stephen F. Austin and Wisconsin are the only two programs in the nation to be ranked in the top 10 nationally in scoring defense each of the last five seasons.

• Taylor Smith has become SFA's all-time shot blocker with 131 for his career

• SFA is 41-9 since the beginning of the 2012 calendar year.

• The Lumberjacks enter Saturday's game averaging just 51.0 points allowed per game, the lowest mark in the country. No team in the nation has ended the year allowing an average of less than 50 points per game since the 1992-93 Princeton Tigers.

Series Notes: This will be the first meeting between SFA and Stanford, but it will not be SFA's first look at a current Pac 12. This will be SFA's seventh game vs. a current Pac 12 school, most recently falling 55-44 to Oregon last season in Eugene. SFA is 1-6 all-time vs. the current Pac 12 with its lone win coming in a 70-67 win at Washington State in 1988.

SFA in the NIT: SFA is making its third appearance in the NIT and its first since 2008. SFA is 1-2 in its previous two appearances, having won a first-round game in 1987 over James Madison before falling to UALR in the second round. In 2008 SFA traveled to UMass and fell to the Minutemen 80-60 in the NIT opening round.

Southland in the NIT: This marks the third consecutive year the Southland Conference has placed a team in the NIT and the 14th year overall. A record three league teams appeared in the 1986 NIT, including Lamar, McNeese State and Louisiana Tech, which lost a semifinal game to Ohio State before defeating Florida in the third-place game. After SFA played in the 2008 NIT, McNeese State hosted Boston College in 2011 and Texas-Arlington visited Washington last year. Oral Roberts has made eight NIT appearances to lead all Southland teams, though all of those meetings took place before the Golden Eagles joined the Southland last July.

Southland in the 2013 Postseason: In addition to SFA’s appearance in the NIT, tournament champion Northwestern State is playing in the NCAA tournament and Oral Roberts is playing in the CollegeInsider.com Tournament. The Demons drew a No. 14 seed will play No. 3 seed Florida at the Frank Erwin Center in Austin on Friday at 6:27 p.m., Central. The game will be televised by TruTV. ORU visits former Southland Conference member Texas-Arlington Wednesday in the CIT. Tip time for that game is 7:30 p.m.