Note: This is Part I of our seven-part NIT Final Four preview. Parts II, III, V, and VII will be published at www.thebarkingcrow.com over the days leading up to Tuesday. Parts IV and VI will be released on Monday and Tuesday as episodes of our podcast, Free Hoops.
- Part I: The Programs
- Part II: The Schools
- Part III: The Coaches
- Part IV: Free Hoops! (expert commentary)
- Part V: The Players
- Part VI: Free Hoops! (head coach interviews)
- Part VII: Final Thoughts Before It All Goes Down
**
Just as the NIT is bigger than all of us, each program in the NIT Final Four is bigger than the players and coaches who inhabit it. We are all merely stewards. Some stewards, however, pass along greatness.
We’ll be talking today about the history—specifically, the NIT history—of each program in the NIT Final Four. We’ve drawn straws to see who’ll go first. It’s Loyola.
Loyola Chicago: Chasing ‘49
In 1949, teams were allowed to decline free throws and maintain possession. That’s how that year’s NIT Championship ended. We’ve all heard the story of Ross Guidice and his underhand free throw—the decisive point in a 48–47 San Francisco victory—but we don’t often talk about Loyola, the loser in that game, trying desperately to wrest the ball loose at Madison Square Garden as the seconds ticked down.
That was Loyola’s second NIT appearance. They lost in the 1939 championship as well (to Long Island). They’d go on to lose in the 1962 semifinals to future A-10 rival Dayton. After 1962? A meager three NIT appearances before this season, each ending swiftly with a first-round loss.
Loyola’s unfortunately better-known for 1963 and 2018 than they are for 1949. Why? Couldn’t tell you. If anything, we’d think Loyola’s 2015 CBI championship would get the most non-NIT love.
More Loyola history:
- That 1963 team was instrumental in breaking college basketball’s color barrier, being one of the first to start four Black players. The lineup debuted in the 1962 NIT Third-Place Game and made waves during the 1963 NCAA T*urnament (which Loyola won). Most notably, it provoked the “Game of Change,” a Sweet 16 matchup with Mississippi State which the Bulldogs had to sneak out of Mississippi to play.
- An independent until 1979, Loyola’s played in the Horizon League (formerly known as the Midwestern City Conference, then the Midwestern Collegiate Conference) as well as the Missouri Valley Conference and now the Atlantic 10. They’ve won six conference titles outright and have tied for another two.
- Among others, LaRue Martin, Jerry Harkness, and Les Hunter played at Loyola. George Ireland was the coach from 1951 until January of 1975, when he retired midseason.
Chattanooga: New Kids on the Moc
This is Chattanooga’s first NIT Final Four. Ron Shumate won a D-II national championship, and Terrell Owens (plus Johnny Taylor) played in the NCAA T*urnament, and Gerald Wilkins got the Mocs so so close to Madison Square Garden in 1985. But when the story of Chattanooga hoops gets told, it’ll be Trey Bonham we remember best.
That 1985 tournament was a special NIT. Reggie Miller and UCLA ended up winning it, beating Steve Alford and Indiana. Tennessee and Louisville played for third place. It was Louisville who beat the Mocs. Louisville beat the Mocs by five a few days after a Wilkins buzzer-beater (off a full-court Eugene Deal assist) pushed a comeback against Lamar into overtime.
Those were the good days for Chattanooga hoops. That is…the good days until these. That era brought eight straight 20-win seasons. It produced four straight NIT appearances. It produced a number of conference titles, with five alone coming within those eight 20-win years. As Murray Arnold’s administration handed things off to Mack McCarthy, times were bright. But even with all that glory…no NIT Final Four. Until now.
More on the Mocs:
- Chattanooga was a Division II school from the introduction of the NCAA College Division (D-II’s predecessor) until 1977–78. Way back in the day, they—like so many other Southern schools—played in the SIAA, the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association. For eleven years in the 30’s and 40’s, they were a Dixie Conference member. For their D-II years, the Mocs were an independent. Since joining Division I, they’ve been part of the SoCon.
- McCarthy is UTC’s winningest coach all-time, with Arnold holding the highest career win percentage. Matt McCall—a recent UMass head coach, for those who don’t follow the A-10—is tied for second on the win percentage list, but he also took over for Will Wade in an era when rosters lingered longer.
- Tommy Bartlett coached at Chattanooga, but it is not the Tommy Bartlett of Wisconsin Dells water skiing fame. Despite Wikipedia linking to that article on the Chattanooga page, which briefly had me extremely excited.
- Yes, the Terrell Owens we mentioned above is T.O. The T.O.
UC Irvine: Not Just a Water Polo School
Find the right person to ask about the history of UC Irvine basketball, and they’ll tell you all about how good the men’s water polo program used to be. Basketball? The history isn’t bad, but it’s mostly come in recent years, thanks to Russell Turner.
UC Irvine wasn’t even founded as a university until 1965. It made the jump to Division I in 1977, but success was hard to find. Playing in the PCAA (the Pacific Coast Athletic Association), which would become the Big West, the Anteaters never finished better than second place until 2001. It wasn’t until 2015—Turner’s fourth season—that they made the NCAA T*urnament, an act they thankfully haven’t made a habit.
This is UC Irvine’s ninth NIT. Their three wins so far are their third, fourth, and fifth in the tournament all-time. From 1986 until last week, they went winless across seven NIT games, including their openers the last two seasons against Oregon and Utah. As it goes for all these programs, things are trending up.
More ‘Eaters:
- UC Irvine’s first NIT appearance, the one in ’82 where they went 1–1, featured the late Kevin Magee, a two-time All-American at UCI and an eventual legend for Maccabi Tel Aviv.
- Under Turner, UCI’s won the Big West outright five times and won a share of the title twice more.
- Mamadou N’Diaye, whom some of you might remember from the 2015 team (he was 7’6”), is currently an assistant at UCF. Hopefully those guys are trying to bring Tacko Fall home. Get N’Diaye and Fall on the same bench.
North Texas: We All Remember 2023
We also probably remember 2022 and 2024, but we really remember 2023.
North Texas has made the NIT four times. North Texas has also made the NIT four times in a row. Before 2022? No NIT’s. Since 2022? NIT every year.
In 2022, the Mean Green fell to Virginia in overtime in the second round. In 2023, the Tylor Perry and Kai Huntsberry team won it all before Grant McCasland left for Texas Tech. In 2024, the Mean Green fell to Seton Hall in the second round. Seton Hall went on to win the title.
The result is a 10–2 all-time NIT record, a staggering mark. But what else is lurking in North Texas’s past?
They won the CBI in 2018.
Something about the postseason gets these guys going.
More:
- UNT has won each of the TIAA (Texas Intercollegiate Athletic Association), Lone Star Conference, Gulf Coast Conference, Southland Conference, Sun Belt Conference, and Conference USA.
- UNT’s also belonged to the American (their current home), the Missouri Valley, and the Big West, where—you guessed it—they used to play UC Irvine. Hank Dickenson shared that fact with us today. You’ll hear it from him himself on Monday’s episode of Free Hoops.
Summing It Up
In total, then, between these four teams:
- One NIT Championship (North Texas, 2023)
- Four NIT Final Fours before this year (UNT x1, Loyola x3)
- 25 total NIT appearances, including this year (UCI x9, LUC x7, UTC x5, UNT x4)
Tomorrow, we’ll be back to talk about the schools themselves.
**
