This was the season that the streaks died. The 164 straight wins when leading with five minutes to go, the 94 straight games between back-to-back losses, the 69 straight wins when holding a double-digit lead, the 44 straight nonconference wins against teams from California.

And now this one: six.

That’s how many consecutive appearances San Diego State’s basketball team had made in the NCAA Tournament . It won’t get to a seventh.

The 68-team field was announced Sunday afternoon, and the 25-9 Aztecs aren’t in it. Their consolation prize, guaranteed by winning the Mountain West regular-season title, is a berth in the NIT , which officially stands for National Invitational Tournament but to players and fans across the country means something else: Not In Tournament. The Aztecs are a No. 2 seed and host IPFW on Tuesday night at 7 at Viejas Arena.

“You know, it’s heartbreaking, all that hard work,” a somber Skylar Spencer said. “It’s every kid’s dream to play in the tournament and we just came up short … We just have to make the best of it.”

It’s the harsh reality of having your bubble burst. You go from a charter flight to an NCAA Tournament site with the cheerleaders and band and families – the national TV, the press conferences, the attention, the adulation – to playing the Indiana University- Purdue University Fort Wayne Mastodons of the Summit League on ESPN3 in a likely half-empty arena that you’ve sold out 72 straight times (another streak that’s sure to end).

SDSU has 48 hours to sell the entire 12,414-seat arena, and that includes student tickets, which aren’t free like in the regular season. The last two times the Aztecs hosted first-round NIT games, in 2003 and 2009, they drew 5,390 and 4,314.

But the program was in a different place then. It hadn’t been to six straight NCAA Tournaments. It didn’t expect to go to a seventh.

“We had a good resume,” coach Steve Fisher said. “We won 25 games. However, we’re not the Lone Ranger when it comes to that. You look at the others who did not get in, and they could show you a resume that says: Why not us? We said the same thing. But when you don’t seal the deal and win that game (in the conference tournament final) that guarantees you entry, then what happened with us could happen.

“And it did happen.”

The Aztecs failed to claim the Mountain West’s automatic berth, losing 68-63 Saturday against Fresno State and necessitating an at-large invite. ESPN’s Joe Lunardi and Sports Illustrated’s Seth Davis predicted they’d get one; CBS Sports’ Jerry Palm and USA Today predicted they wouldn’t.

Turns out, they really weren’t that close. Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione, the chair of the selection committee, said it came down to five teams for the final spot. SDSU wasn’t among them.

“We recognized that they challenged themselves with a tough non-conference schedule,” Castiglione said of the Aztecs. “But in the end they didn’t get enough wins against that type of schedule, at least in the committee’s eyes.”

NIT first round: SDSU vs. IPFW Tuesday: 7 p.m. at Viejas Arena. On the air: ESPN3; 1090-AM Tickets: Starting at $10. Season-ticket holders can purchase them online beginning Sunday night or at the Qualcomm Stadium box office on Monday. The general public can buy them Tuesday at 9 a.m. Parking: $15, cash only. Season passes will not be valid. Students: $5. They are available Monday at 10 a.m. at the Viejas Arena box office. Tickets are not free, like in the regular season.

He mentioned three specifics that “factored into the conversation”: a 2-3 record against the next two best teams in the Mountain West (Fresno State and Boise State ), scheduling two nonconference games against non-Division I opponents, and the 53-48 loss at Petco Park to USD and its 300 RPI in a game the Aztecs coaches privately did not want to play but did at the insistence of athletic director Jim Sterk.

“Every year it’s the same story,” Spencer said. “There are teams that everybody expected to be in it but came up short.”

Had they got in, it likely would have been a “play-in” game in Dayton, Ohio, on Tuesday or Wednesday, which are typically reserved for recipients of the last four at-large berths. The winners in Dayton advance into the 64-team bracket two days later as a No. 11 seed.

The play-in games: Wichita State vs. Vanderbilt, Michigan vs. Tulsa.

Let’s go to the resumes.

Vanderbilt has a 26 rating in the respected computer metric of Kenpom.com but a 61 RPI, three 100-plus RPI losses and a 3-9 road record. SDSU: 43 Kenpom, 40 RPI, two 100-plus losses and a 9-2 road record.

Michigan has an RPI of 57 and Kenpom of 56.

Tulsa: 58 and 58.

Syracuse , a 10 seed, somehow got in ahead of those four with an RPI of 71, three 100-plus losses, a 3-8 road record and five losses in six games to close the season.

Tulsa, which lost 89-67 to a reeling Memphis team in the quarterfinals of the AAC conference tournament, appeared in none of the 59 mock brackets compiled by the “Bracket Matrix” website. Vanderbilt appeared in only 19, Syracuse in 24. (SDSU was in 31.)

It prompted longtime ESPN bracketology guru Joe Lunardi, who had projected SDSU to make the field, to author a scathing rebuttal to the committee’s selections. He called the inclusion of Syracuse “borderline at best” and Tulsa “indefensible by every known standard,” and concluded that the process “appears to have gone off the rails.”

The last four who didn’t make the cut became No. 1 seeds in the 32-team NIT: Monmouth, Valparaiso, St. Bonaventure and South Carolina. SDSU is the No. 2 seed in South Carolina’s quadrant, getting the winner of Long Beach State -Washington should it prevail Tuesday. Win three games, and you go to the semifinals at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Fisher knows the drill. The last time the Aztecs were in this spot, in 2009 after losing 52-50 in the Mountain West tournament final, they were the last team left out of the NCAA bracket and reached the semifinals of the NIT as a No. 1 seed.

“The consolation prize: I’ve never been to New York,” senior Winston Shepard said. “I plan on playing in Madison Square Garden for years to come (in the NBA), so I’d like to go see how it is.”