It’s a sparse slate for college basketball tonight, but thanks to the Big Ten’s policy of omnipresence in scheduling, we do have an impactful early-season matchup. Minnesota’s going south, to Iowa City, trying to bolster its NIT chances with a victory. Yes, a victory.
Tonight’s is a symbiotic game, in which one specific result (in this case, Minnesota winning) would help both teams. Minnesota’s NIT chances sit at 35.6% in my colleague Joe Stunardi’s model, which might not sound like much but is near the top of the heap. Iowa’s are further down on the list—26.9%, only—but still in the thick of the NIT picture. Worth noting here is the fact that the Hawkeyes, despite currently projecting to land on the wrong side of the NIT’s higher cut line (the one that divides the NIT and that other postseason basketball tournament), are one of the nine most likely teams to win the whole thing come April. They’re not just looking to make it. They’re looking to do what they couldn’t in 2013: win it all.
It’s that 26.9% probability that currently holds Fran McCaffery’s team back. They certainly have the look of an NIT contender: a leader playing through pain in Jordan Bohannon, one of the best players in the country in Luke Garza, and one of the poorer shooting offenses in the power six conferences. However, their road victory over Syracuse coupled with their neutral-court win over Texas Tech currently have them trending for a meaningless postseason basketball competition in which they probably wouldn’t even last through the first weekend.
It’s tricky, making the NIT out of the Big Ten. It’s easy to pile up a strong overall résumé while staying too far under .500 to be considered, and it’s easy to hold close to .500 yet still land with too many good victories to exist peacefully in NIT-land. In an ideal state, beating teams worse than you at home and losing to teams better than you on the road would be a feasible route. For Iowa, though, with three non-conference losses already on their sheet and a potential fourth and even fifth on the way at Iowa State and against Cincinnati in Chicago, simplicity does not appear to be an option. The Hawkeyes need to be inconsistent: flashes of brilliance, head-scratchers of defeats, maybe a McCaffery suspension along the way for self-immolating on the sideline in response to a reasonable call. Losing to Minnesota might put their overall win-loss record behind the eight ball as far as keeping it in the range the committee will consider, but it would also do a good job of resetting expectations as the picture focuses. Lose tonight, and losing to Nebraska doesn’t become so necessary. A win would also free Iowa up to compete against Cincinnati in Chicago the weekend after next in a possible Final Four (the better one, of course—in Madison Square Garden) preview. A more secure NIT status allows for statement games against potential NIT opponents.
Minnesota does not share Iowa’s risk of playing too well to make the NIT. It’s still a risk, of course—the season is young—but it’s a much lesser one for the Gophers. Theoretically, yes, Richard Pitino could get his second NIT title in Minneapolis, six years after the first, but just making the field is a more reasonable goal.
To accomplish that feat, Minnesota needs all the wins they can get, because wins are going to be more and more difficult to come by as the season wears on. They already have only a .500 overall record, they have to play both Ohio State and Michigan State twice, and their worst remaining opponent is FIU (and if you don’t think Richard Pitino can lose to his former employer at home, you haven’t watched Richard Pitino’s teams play basketball). Winning tonight isn’t, of course, essential, but a loss would more likely than not push Minnesota further off the lower of the two NIT bubbles.
A quiet night in college basketball?
Far from it.
