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CHAMPAIGN – The No. 5 Illinois volleyball team will open the NCAA tournament at home for the second straight year, joined this week at Huff Hall by three teams coming off conference tournament titles.

The Illini (24-5) learned Sunday they will face Indiana-Purdue-Fort Wayne in the first round at 7 p.m. Thursday. The Mastadons (20-11), an NCAA Division I member since 2001, are making their first NCAA postseason appearance after earning the Summit League's automatic bid. They did so by knocking off top-seeded host North Dakota State – which entered 23-3 and winners of its last 20 home matches – for the conference tournament championship.

"IPFW has come out of nowhere and kind of all the sudden become a very good team," Illini coach Kevin Hambly said.

No. 24 Dayton faces Wisconsin-Milwaukee at 4:30 p.m. Thursday. Dayton won its fifth Atlantic 10 tournament title in seven years, while UWM extended its winning streak to 11 in a row in the Horizon League tournament final.

"This little part of our bracket right now, the weekend is going to be tough," Hambly said.

The Illini had held out hope of being among the tournament's top four seeds and thus the highest seed in its 16-team regional pod. Instead, those slots went to Penn State (1), Texas (2), Florida State (3) and Stanford (4). Illinois is in the same pod as Stanford, which will host a regional Dec. 11-12.

Hambly said his team might have edged Stanford for the fourth seed had Illinois not lost to Minnesota in its regular season finale.

"I think those two (seeds) maybe could have been reversed if we would have won (Saturday) night because we were a little bit ahead of them as far as in rankings and RPI and all that stuff," the UI coach said, "But we're excited about being seeded high and hopefully having a good shot at going to the regional championships."

The Illini last advanced to a regional title match in 1992.