As Kim Kardashian once famously said, “You never know what the future holds or where my life will take me.” Does that apply here? No. I was thinking we’d use a different quote. But, here we are. Our NIT Bracketology was updated earlier today and we’re going to talk about it.
The big thing I *think* people want to know is who’s on the NIT’s bottom bubble. It’s pretty easy to figure out who’s on the top bubble (there are…websites for that), and it’s pretty easy to tell who’s in our projected field (just click that link from the last paragraph). To find out who’s on the bottom bubble, though? I don’t know of anywhere on The Internet™ that has that information besides us, right here.
- First Four Out: Santa Clara, Southern Miss, Georgia, Cincinnati
- Next Four Out: Syracuse, Loyola Marymount, Louisiana, UNLV
That’s what we’re working with.
One note on this? It doesn’t include teams projected to finish the season below .500 overall. That includes Oklahoma, Texas Tech, and a chunk of teams in the Big East and SEC. Those teams get shunted off to a different area of our list, and we don’t look into that area while the teams are in it. They deserve their privacy.
By conference, the projected bids stack up right now as follows:
- Pac-12: 4
- Big Ten: 3
- ACC: 3
- SEC: 3
- Big East: 2
- Big 12: 1
- MWC: 1
- AAC: 1
- WCC: 0
- C-USA: 1
- A-10: 2
- WAC: 1
- Sun Belt: 1
Beyond those, it’s all automatic bids. Some of those are even automatic bids. But for those of those which are only automatic bids, they’re at least in or near the at-large range.
I get asked a lot by people on the street wearing hooded jackets and speaking in hushed tones who the NIT favorites are. The answer is still Memphis—they haven’t gotten rid of us yet—and the other nine teams on our list remain (in order of me remembering them) Gonzaga, Tulane, Dayton, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, UAB, St. John’s, Illinois, and Texas Tech. At the moment, only three of the ten are in the projected field, which probably means our list is stretching too aggressively but we’ll say means there’s simply tons of movement left to occur. So. If your favorite team isn’t in our NIT Bracketology yet? Don’t lose hope. Very few teams have been mathematically eliminated.
When will the next update come? I am not in charge of that. My hope is Monday. My dream is Monday. My bet is Tuesday.
