Gird your lions. And your loins. The NIT is only one month away.
Here’s what to know:
Dates:
The cadence is a little different this year, with the NIT Final Four starting on Thursday instead of Tuesday. This is so that the NIT Championship can be played on the same day as the Division II and Division III national championships.
- First Round: Tuesday–Wednesday, March 17th–18th
- Second Round: Saturday–Sunday, March 21st–22nd
- Quarterfinals: Tuesday–Wednesday, March 24th–25th
- Semifinals: Thursday, April 2nd (7 PM ET & 9:30 PM ET, ESPN)
- Championship: Sunday, April 5th (8 PM ET, ESPN2)
Locations:
No huge changes here, but the championship will be at Gainbridge Fieldhouse instead of Hinkle Fieldhouse, with the NCAA opting for a larger venue because of the 2024 NIT Final Four sellouts and the addition of D-II and D-III to the proceedings.
- First Round: Campus sites
- Second Round: Campus sites
- Quarterfinals: Campus sites
- Semifinals: Hinkle Fieldhouse
- Championship: Gainbridge Fieldhouse
Selection:
To my knowledge, the selection process is the same as it was last year. If that changes, we will of course weigh in. Assuming the process isn’t changing, there are three kinds of bids: Exempt bids, automatic bids, and at-large bids.
Exempt Bids
Exempt bids are awarded by conference. Specifically, they’re awarded to kenpom’s twelve highest-ranked conferences on Selection Sunday. Each of those twelve conferences gets one exempt bid, with the ACC and SEC getting two additional exempt bids as a collateral reward from the NIT’s backroom war with the College Basketball Crown.
This is technically subject to change, but at the moment, the twelve exempt conferences are these:
- SEC: 3 exempt bids
- Big Ten: 1 exempt bid
- Big 12: 1 exempt bid
- ACC: 3 exempt bids
- Big East: 1 exempt bid
- Mountain West: 1 exempt bid
- Atlantic 10: 1 exempt bid
- WCC: 1 exempt bid
- Missouri Valley: 1 exempt bid
- The American: 1 exempt bid
- Big West: 1 exempt bid
- WAC: 1 exempt bid
Conference USA, the Ivy League, the CAA, the Big Sky, and the MAC are next in line, but with hardly any nonconference games remaining nationally, the expectation should be that these twelve conferences are set.
Who gets the exempt bid from each conference? If I remember correctly, it’s the willing team with the best “KNIT” score. What’s the KNIT score? It’s an average of the seven rating systems on the NCAA’s selection team sheets: NET, kenpom, BPI, Torvik, KPI, SOR, and WAB.
Exempt bids come with home game privileges in the first round. Exempt teams are the teams seeded 1–4.
Automatic Bids
Automatic bids are available for regular season conference champions who don’t make the NCAA Tournament, don’t get an exempt bid, and finish with a KNIT score of 125 or better. If I’m remembering correctly, that’s a KNIT score of 125 or better at the time their conference tournament begins, not a KNIT score of 125 or better on Selection Sunday, meaning a conference tournament loss shouldn’t knock a team out of automatic bid territory. I might be wrong on that, though.
Entering play tonight, there are eight teams in automatic bid territory, which is to say they’re the favorite to win their conference’s regular season title, they don’t play in a top-twelve conference, and their KNIT score is currently 125 or better:
- Miami (OH)
- Yale
- Stephen F. Austin
- Liberty
- High Point
- UNC Wilmington
- North Dakota State
- Austin Peay
Great, great, great list. Can only hope for these teams’ sake that they keep pumping that KNIT score and then lose in the conference tournament. The NIT is within reach, and remember: This is how Chattanooga made the field last year. Now, they’re the reigning national champions.
At-Large Bids
These are available to everybody else, from both exempt and non-exempt conferences. If not all 16 exempt bids get filled, teams from this category and the automatic bid category may host first-round games and be seeded 1–4. At-large invitees are chosen by the NIT Selection Committee. To our knowledge, there’s no requirement that these teams have a .500 overall record, but that’s long been a source of confusion in NIT Bracketology circles. (There are at least two of us!)
The College Basketball Crown
The Crown appears to be on its way out, halving its size this year after failing to find enough power conference teams last year who were willing to play in its “power conference only” tournament. But, it still exists for now, and at least last year, a number of Big East, Big 12, and Big Ten teams participated, with Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark unsuccessfully promoting the sparsely-attended event to fans while Big East officials, per sources, exerted heavy pressure on Big East teams to participate due to those officials’ intense fear of Fox Sports.
There’s a lot of confusion about the Crown’s selection process, with industry sources suggesting Fox Sports leaves its criteria intentionally vague so as to lead Big East, Big 12, and Big Ten athletic departments to believe their teams are contractually obligated to play in the Crown, even when in some cases they might not be.
Our understanding is that this year, the Crown will find two Big 12 teams, two Big East teams, two Big Ten teams, and two wild card teams, and that the wild cards might end up being from the Big 12, Big East, and Big Ten. At least six teams will be contractually obligated to not play in the NIT (two apiece from those three conferences), but to our knowledge, no one is contractually obligated to play in the Crown. Our understanding is that there’s some contractual obligation which says the first two non-NCAAT teams from each of those leagues must not play in the NIT. How “non-NCAAT” is defined, though, is unclear. Is it KNIT score? Is it NET? Is it Fox Sports’s own subjective choice? Does it depend how many teams listed ahead of you already declined the Crown? Very few people seem to know. Based on Oklahoma State’s situation last year, the key to avoiding Crown conscription as a school in a Fox Sports conference is to avoid being one of “the first two non-NCAAT teams” in that conference under any plausible definition of the phrase.
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Current information about the 2026 NIT can be found on the NCAA’s NIT homepage.
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