EUGENE — For the second year in a row, Oregon will open the postseason against a team from the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference.

The stakes are not as high this year.

After five straight trips to the NCAA Tournament, Oregon (22-12) fell into the National Invitation Tournament, where it will host Rider (22-9) in the opening round at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

The Ducks earned a No. 3 seed in their eight-team quadrant of the 32-team field. Rider, the sixth seed, shared the MAAC title at 15-3 but was upset by St. Peter’s 66-55 in the quarterfinals of the conference tournament.

Oregon is making its first trip to the NIT since 2012, when it lost to Washington in the quarterfinals. The Broncs lost their only previous NIT game at Penn State in 1998.

If Oregon beats Rider, it will either visit second-seeded Marquette or host No. 7 Harvard next weekend. Notre Dame is the top seed in the Ducks’ bracket, which will send its winner to the tournament semifinals in New York on March 27.

Rider, which is located in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, features four players who earned all-conference honors, including Dimencio Vaughn, a 6-foot-5 freshman who earned first-team accolades after averaging 15.8 points and 6.7 rebounds per game. Sophomore point guard Stevie Jordan was a second-team selection who had 12.7 points and 5.9 rebounds per game.

Freshman forward Frederick Scott, the conference’s sixth man of the year who averaged 12.7 points per game, was a third-team selection along with freshman guard Jordan Allen, who averaged 13.3 points per game.

Rider’s nonconference schedule included a 101-75 loss at Xavier, which is a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, and an 88-84 loss at Providence, which is also in the NCAA field. The Broncs won 11 of their final 12 games before losing in the conference tournament.

Last season, Oregon opened the NCAA Tournament with a 93-77 win over Iona, which split two conference games with Rider this season.

Oregon had a three-game winning streak snapped with a 74-54 loss in the Pac-12 tournament semifinals to USC, which is also in the NIT, along with fellow Pac-12 teams Stanford, Utah and Washington.

Payton Pritchard leads the Ducks with 14.1 points and 4.8 assists per game, and Elijah Brown and Troy Brown are scoring 13.8 and 11.7 points per game, respectively.

Senior forward MiKyle McIntosh, a graduate transfer from Illinois State who leads the Ducks with 6.2 rebounds to go with 11.4 points per game, is making his second straight trip to the NIT, after reaching the second round with the Redbirds last year.