EMMITSBURG — Mount St. Mary’s basketball coach Jamion Christian said he created a document with his players called “Embrace the Good,” in which they wrote positive things on one side and negative things on the other in correlation with their on-court performance.

The goal was simple — fill up the front of the document with more positives than negatives after each game.

The Mount went 1-11 through the first month and a half of the season, suffering eight straight losses. It then won eight straight games through January and capped the season as the Northeast Conference champions with a 71-61 victory over Saint Francis (Pa.) last week in the league tournament championship game.

Now, the Mountaineers get their reward.

Cheers erupted inside Knott Auditorium on the Mount’s campus when it was announced the Mountaineers would face New Orleans on Tuesday in Dayton, Ohio. It’s the first game of the NCAA tournament, set for 6:40 p.m. on truTV.

The winner of this “first four” game plays Thursday in Buffalo against Villanova, the reigning champion and the tournament’s overall top seed.

“We were able to improve, and that kind of [led] into the tremendous season that we had,” Christian said. “We started winning games and attacking the schedule. We have a great group of guys that work hard and deserve that opportunity to play.”

New Orleans (20-11) defeated Texas A&M-Corpus Christi for the Southland Conference title on Saturday and earned its first NCAA tournament bid since 1996.

The Mount’s last trip to Dayton, in 2014, resulted in a 71-64 loss to Albany in another first four game. Mount senior Will Miller hit a career-high seven 3-pointers in the loss.

“We’re excited to play New Orleans,” Christian said. “I looked at the profiles of all those possible teams, and I thought our resume was pretty good. We have a chance to go prove that now. We got a great team in New Orleans who won their conference tournament and I think finished third or fourth in their league. ... They’re playing really well as of late, so we’ve got to really be locked in and put all of our energy towards them and try to do what we didn’t do that time in Dayton.”

This is the Mount’s fifth trip to the NCAA tournament, and the team’s second under Christian. The conference champions earned an automatic bid to the tournament after winning the NEC tournament title.

The early-season struggles came against major conference foes such as West Virginia, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa State and Arkansas. But the Mount regrouped and heads into the NCAA tournament at 19-15.

“To sum it up, [the season’s been] a roller coaster,” junior guard Greg Alexander said. “How it started out was discouraging at times, because we started out not-so-great. But for me, personally, playing all these top-tier teams made me feel good once we got to conference play and I knew we would be ready because I don’t think these teams have seen the type of competition we’ve seen to start the season. I think the way we responded and went into conference play, I think everybody felt the same way I did, just ready for anybody.”

Sophomore guard Elijah Long (John Carroll), who earned first-team All-Northeast Conference honors and was named the NEC tournament Most Valuable Player, is the Mount’s leading scorer at 15.4 points per game. Junior guard Junior Robinson, a second-team all NEC pick, is second with 14.1 points per game.