It’s time for more basketball. In fact, some of the basketball has already started! It’s ok, you haven’t missed much. But give The Air Force Song a listen if you’re in the mood. They won earlier.
As you probably know, there are basketball games this evening. As you probably also know, many of them will impact the NIT. What you might not know is which games matter, and how they matter, and whether it means anything that the guy in the elevator this morning stopped talking as soon as you stepped in.
We’re here to help.
Below are three resources to help you in your personal NIT quest. Below those are all the games to keep an eye on, along with when I think they’re happening. Keep in mind, I’m mortal, which means I’ll die eventually and also means I might have missed a game or two. But that’s the beauty of the NIT. It’s fleeting, and we’re all in its fanhood together.
Resource #1: Don’t worry about the elevator guy. He just thinks it’s rude to talk in elevators. Doesn’t even really care when other people do it. More of a him thing.
Resource #2: College Basketball Probabilities
Resource #3: NIT Bracketology
Now, the Games:
We, the NIT fandom, like to break these down into categories. Sometimes, there’s just one game in a category. That’s fine. Every game is special, but some games are more special than others.
Hey, You Should Probably Win
Florida State @ Notre Dame (9:00 PM Eastern)
Clemson @ Virginia Tech (7:00 PM Eastern)
Tulsa @ Temple (7:00 PM Eastern)
SMU @ UCF (7:00 PM Eastern)
Georgetown @ Creighton (8:00 PM Eastern)
St. John’s @ Butler (7:00 PM Eastern)
Saint Louis @ George Mason (7:00 PM Eastern)
Kansas State @ Oklahoma State (8:00 PM Central—keeping you on your toes)
TCU @ Kansas (8:00 PM Eastern)
Notre Dame, Clemson, Tulsa, and Oklahoma State are all expected to wind up right around the NIT bubble. So, uh, win, guys. Saint Louis is above that bubble for now, but a loss in Fairfax would be bad, bad bad, bad bad bad news. Georgetown’s also above that bubble, but if they keep losing, they might finish below .500, and we don’t really know what happens when that happens (excluding such teams is not a rule, but it’s been treated like one since it became not-a-rule a few years ago). Then, you’ve got St. John’s, SMU, and TCU. None of them are out of the race. But they also aren’t really in it right now. TCU and St. John’s could get themselves in it by winning. SMU probably couldn’t, but they could at least get closer.
Hey, You Should Probably Lose
Dayton @ Rhode Island (9:00 PM Eastern)
Don’t even think about it, URI. You cannot afford this victory.
Hey, I—oh, sorry, hold on a second
(in the distance, faintly): STOP IT RHODE ISLAND I’M WARNING YOU!!!
Sorry, back to this. Hey, I Don’t Know What You Should Do
LSU @ Arkansas (7:00 PM Eastern)
Xavier @ Providence (6:30 PM Eastern)
Arkansas’s looking fairly comfortably NIT-bound right now, but I don’t know if beating LSU at home would change that. If it wouldn’t, the win would be nice for seeding, but they’ve got to make it for seeding to matter, you know? Wild stuff. The NIT’s not easy, guys.
Similar situation for Providence, but even more fraught, since they’re evidently expected to be right smack dab on that bubble, with questions about how much it matters if you lose to Penn and Northwestern and Long Beach State and College of Charleston in November and then lose to Florida by 32 in December abounding. Again, this sport is as much art as it is competition.
One of You Should Lose and the Other Should Win
Minnesota @ Indiana (7:00 PM Eastern)
Florida @ Georgia (7:00 PM Eastern)
Minnesota’s in the same .500 boat as Georgetown (and it might be sinking, so grab a life jacket, Goldy!). Indiana needs a good ol’ home loss to drop expectations and make me sift through so many #NIT tweets tonight when I check that hashtag because man, Indiana fans like to tweet about the NIT.
Georgia isn’t dead yet, but they’ve got work to do, and the same is true for Florida. What better way to bring bitter rivals together than opportunities like this, in which what’s good for one is also good for the other? The NIT: The Tournament That Heals™.
Conference Tournaments
There are three of these going on (shoutout to the NEC, which evidently has a channel called NEC Front Row somewhere online that was abbreviated “NEC FR” when I saw it which made me think it was “NEC FO’ REAL”), but none of their games matter to the NIT, unless you’re a Colorado State fan, in which case you should win and also probably start reporting cases of Coronavirus at the campuses of real NIT bubble teams so they stop playing and you can pick up some ground.
