SEATTLE (Oct. 4) ­ Seattle Pacific University will face host Saint Mary's and two other Division I programs which qualified for last season's NCAA tournament as part of a season-opening men's basketball tournament in Moraga, Calif.

A unique set of circumstances will allow the Falcons to classify the three games as preseason exhibitions while their opponents will count them as regular season games.

SPU will face Saint Mary's in the Nov. 10 nightcap of the round-robin tourney, then meet Kentucky's Murray State and San Diego State at 5 p.m. the following nights.

Murray State won the Ohio Valley Conference before falling to North Carolina in the first round of the NCAA tournament. San Diego State is coming off a Mountain West title and lost to Indiana. Saint Mary's finished 17-12.

Seattle Pacific made the NCAA Div. II semifinals and finished 26-6 last season. Three starters are back from Jeff Hironaka's squad which won the Great Northwest Athletic Conference and West Region championships.

New NCAA guidelines allow Div. I programs to exempt games played in multi-team tournaments. Div. II rules stipulate that games prior to Nov. 15 are countable as exhibitions.

Seattle Pacific opens the regular at home Nov. 17-18, hosting Cal State L.A. and Cal Poly Pomona in the Sodexho Tip-Off Classic. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, SPU meets both UC San Diego and Cal State Dominguez Hills in Las Vegas. The Falcons host BYU Hawaii and visits Cal State San Bernardino before another trip to Vegas before Christmas.

Following the Oak Harbor Freight Lines Holiday Classic Dec. 29-30, the GNAC campaign begins Jan. 4 at Alaska Anchorage.