The bracket below is our best current prediction of the final NIT bracket. It is predictive of where things will end up. It is not a reflection of where things currently stand.
We aren’t currently running our full model. That will come soon, but in the meantime, here’s how this works.
If you notice any irregularities or have questions of any sort, please say something in the comments or on twitter: @joestunardi.
- If you want NCAA Tournament Bracketology, we have that too.
- Regions are ordered as follows: first overall seed; fourth overall seed; second overall seed; third overall seed.
- A single asterisk designates an exempt bid, awarded to the best available teams from certain conferences. A double asterisk designates an automatic bid, awarded to certain conference champions who lose in their conference tournament. We currently estimate five to be the likeliest number of automatic bids, and we’ve given these five to the conference favorites we estimate to be likeliest to receive them.
Last Updated: Preseason
Mississippi Region
| 1. Mississippi* |
| Virginia |
| 4. Northern Iowa* |
| Nebraska |
| 3. Louisville* |
| Ohio** |
| 2. Missouri* |
| New Mexico |
LSU Region
| 1. LSU* |
| College of Charleston** |
| 4. Louisiana Tech* |
| SMU |
| 3. UAB* |
| Georgia |
| 2. Northwestern* |
| Notre Dame |
Miami (FL) Region
| 1. Miami (FL)* |
| Wofford** |
| 4. San Francisco* |
| Nevada |
| 3. Seton Hall* |
| Syracuse |
| 2. Boise State* |
| Penn State |
VCU Region
| 1. VCU* |
| Appalachian State** |
| 4. Seattle* |
| Minnesota |
| 3. Arizona State* |
| South Carolina |
| 2. NC State* |
| High Point** |
Note: With the College Basketball Crown expected to take two teams each from the Big 12, Big East, and Big Ten, we have removed TCU, USC, Rutgers, Providence, UCF, and Butler from our projected field. In our projection, they would each be higher in line for an exempt bid than the recipient from their respective league.
Now that Wisconsin’s NCAA bubble has officially burst and sit at 17-14, what seed do you see them in the NIT? Looking for a bid on Sunday night.
Assuming things don’t change and the NCAA committee doesn’t take them, it’ll depend on whether they’re one of the first four teams out of the NCAAT. The NCAA committee says who their First Four Out is, and those teams become the 1-seeds in the NIT. We’ll have a new projection tomorrow, but I could see anywhere between a 1 and a 3-seed for the Badgers. Worse is possible, because they have such bad KenPom and NET numbers, but I’d guess they get at least one home game.
No 22-12 Indiana State from the MVC?
Generally, teams need to be around the top 80 or 90 in ratings systems to make the NIT cut, and Indiana State’s around the edge of that in BPI/KenPom/Sagarin, but in the ratings on the team sheet that measure body of work (KPI and SOR), they’re a long ways off.
A shame Syracuse took too many losses to qualify. They have talent, have played a lot of teams close, but unfortunately have a nasty habit of losing games they were in command of. They have a large fan base in many areas of the country and with Boeheim’s retirement announcement it would have been good to see him go out with at least one more game.
It seems a shame not to have these schools grouped by region, it would create more interest and rivalries: VCU and Virginia Tech, Eastern Washington and Washington State, North Carolina and Clemson plus others!!
They do build the bracket regionally, but they’re told to avoid conference rematches before the regional finals and they avoid nonconference rematches in the first round. Dueling motivations for sure. We always err on the side of avoiding the rematches when we build our projections.
Will New Mexico be in if they lose tonight against Wyoming?
Yes
As long as it isn’t a blowout loss (and probably even if it is), we think so. It’s hard to call anyone a lock when it comes to the NIT, but they’d be about as clear an NIT team as you can have four days out from the Selection Show.
Is this update on Wednesday March 8th or Tuesday March 7th? Just wanted to clarify from where it says “Wednesday March 7th”. Thank you for clarifying
Thanks for pointing that out! Wednesday March 8th. We’ve fixed it now. Appreciate you bringing it to our attention.
Washington State is a lock for you, but Nebraska isn’t? How many bad losses does Nebraska have vs how many quality wins? Washington Stat has one Quad 1 win and as it may be a good one, Nebraska has 5-7 wins against Tournament Teams
Wisconsin
Rutgers
Penn State
Iowa
@Iowa
Maryland
@Creighton
Vs
USC
@Arizona
Bad losses…
Nebraska – Maybe St John’s?
Washington State Lost to Prairie View A&M and got Swept by Utah
Who said Washington State is a lock? We have them playing a road game in here, which means they’re one of the lowest seeded at-large teams in our field.
You make a good argument for Nebraska! But we aren’t doing this based on our opinion. We’re doing this based on past NIT committees’ decisions, especially last year’s. Last year’s put a lot of stock in NET and/or KenPom. Unfortunately for Nebraska, having 14 losses by double digits hurts you a lot in those systems, even if the losses were all to NIT bubble teams at worst.
WSU’s bad losses early in the season truly were BAD!
However we also have wins against
Oregon
ASU
Northern Kentucky (Horizon league champs!)
Surprisingly WSU’s net is also significantly higher than Braskas. Hopefully we both get in and I am more then ready for a wheat field v cornfield showdown!
Any chance for Cincinnati?
They’re right on the bubble. Have been projecting as our second team out over the last few days, so right around a coin flip for us at the moment.
What are nebraska odds of making the NIT if they only beat minnesota in the tourney? Obviously a win over Minny and a win over Maryland would help more
It might depend on how much they win and lose by. Their issue right now is KenPom and/or NET, and those are two where margin really matters (NET says it doesn’t, but they use overall efficiency, which is just margin by a different name). If they beat Minnesota, they’ll at the very least be really close to getting a bid. If they beat Maryland too, I’d have to imagine they’re in unless there’s a lot of movement around them in the selection list.
Holy choke monster Batman, all these rinky dink mid-major top seeds are gaging left and right, they’re popping NIT bubbles as we speak. Bradley, Hofstra, Youngstown St, Southern Miss, E. Washington, we’re only like a couple days in and we’ve already got five regular-season pretenders in the NIT. There is going to be at the LEAST three or four more, not sure what the record is since the NIT went to this auto-bid rule, I think it’s 7 or 8 so it could go down this year. You could have a TWENTY-win ACC team not make the NIT, lol. Utah Valley, Texas A&M CC, Furman, Vermont, these are all choke candidates that could go down this week.
There haven’t been fewer than 10 NIT automatic bids since 2010. The average over the last 10 NITs with automatic bids is 11.8. The record is 15, set in 2016. This is not unusual.
Wow, thanks Stu, didn’t know that many regular-season conference champs crashed and burned in 2016. I personally don’t think the auto bid helps anybody, the little schools that won their regular season championship and lost in their tourney are just as dejected if not more so than say a power five team that was say just above .500 and knew for quite some time they weren’t an NCAA caliber team. Plus these mid-major teams don’t draw for the most part so nobody ends up making any money. My alma mater is Syracuse and given their horrible NET they might win two ACCT games and still not get an NIT invite. Now seriously, Cuse had 26,000+ at an NIT game in 2007, Youngstown St couldn’t get that total if they picked the venue to play at for 15 games, let alone one.
Youngstown State will make the NIT now they were eliminated in the Horizon Tourney. What are the chances they get an NIT home game?
Not great. They probably won’t be ranked higher than a 6/7 seed.
They could get one if there’s a scheduling conflict at the school they’re playing – for example, if that school is hosting a WNCAAT site. Most likely, though, they’ll be going on the road.
Can Marshall sneak an at-large?
It’s possible, but they’d probably need a lot of other bubble teams to lose, and they’d need very few NIT automatic bids. They aren’t so far out of it that they don’t have a chance, but it’d take a decently big surprise as of right now.
Thanks man. I think we’re just on the outside looking in, especially now that Hofstra lost last night taking another automatic spot.
If Furman wins there Socon tournament, does regular season co-champ Samford get an automatic bid?
Samford does not get an automatic bid. Each conference can only have one team in line for the automatic NIT bid, so when there’s a tie, it goes to whoever wins the conference’s tiebreaker. With Furman winning the SoCon Tournament, neither will go to the NIT.
So no chance at all that Samford will still get a look at a spot just as an at large even though they aren’t granted an automatic berth by being co-champs?
They can be considered, but their team sheet isn’t good enough. Generally, teams want to be in the top 80 or 90 of ratings systems on the team sheet (NET, KPI, SOR, Sagarin, BPI, and KenPom are the six). Samford is not in that territory.
Thanks for the great explanation. Since Samford was a conference co-champion from the SOCON (a pretty good conference), will they at least get an invite to a different type of postseason tourney? What are your thoughts?
Of course! Thanks for reading. I would guess that the CBI would be willing to have them, but I believe the CBI is still pay-to-play, so at that point it’d be up to Samford on whether or not they want to go. Ethan Hennessy is the only CBI bracketologist I know of, but he’s really earnest and does a great job. I’ll link his last post below. The CIT doesn’t exist anymore, so the CBI’s the only possibility for teams who miss the NIT.
https://happeninghoops.com/2023/03/04/lets-talk-about-detroit-mercy-cbi-bracketology-8-3-4-23/
Can NewMexico earn a #1 seed with Wins in the Mountain West Tournament?
Definitely! Hard to say exactly what they’d need to do, because so much depends what happens with teams around them on the seed list, but it’s definitely possible.
What about Tulane?
Tulane’s not out of it, but they have a lot of work to do, and they might need a kind eye from the committee relative to how the committee approached things last year. We’ll keep updating on them in our NIT Bubble Watch as their games go along.
What about other Missouri valley teams southern illinois
No luck this year, barring a big surprise from the committee. Indiana State’s the closest, and they aren’t particularly close.
What about Oklahoma, they have beat many ranked teams and I think they should be able to make it in.
The problem for Oklahoma is that the NIT committee doesn’t invite sub-.500 teams, even if their team sheet is otherwise perfectly deserving. They could always change that practice, but we aren’t betting on it changing this year. Meaning: Oklahoma needs to win their first two games in the Big 12 Tournament to make the NIT. The bright spot is that if they do that, they’re probably a 2-seed like Texas was when they were .500 in 2019.
Does the NIT consider injuries like the NCAA tournament does? For example Cincinnati lost two games (@ Tulane, @ ECU) without their leading rebounder and 3rd leading scorer Viktor Lahkin.
I’ve never seen anything explicitly forbidding it, but I don’t know the extent to which injuries are a factor in the NIT committee’s decision-making. We’ve never seen it feature prominently enough to make it part of our projections, but that doesn’t mean they don’t take injuries into account.
What about Nebraska and the roll they are on?
Should jump a team like Washington St after this weekend. Q1 records are 4-10 vs 1-11.
Also exact same record on the 9th SOS vs 43rd for Wash St.
Without a doubt… yeah Washington State finished 6-0 against the worst teams in the PAC-12. Nebraska went 5-1 against five tournament teams and Minnesota. Just sayin’
Utah Valley – so are they viewed as having won their conference going into the wac tournament? They did but got seeded as 2, I don’t quite get it? If they win the wac tournament, that doesn’t mean Sam Houston would auto get in, does it?
The WAC decided to seed their tournament independently of regular season win-loss record, but it still used regular season win-loss record to name its regular season champion, and that’s what determines the NIT automatic bid. So: Utah Valley is in line for the NIT automatic bid if they lose in the WAC Tournament, and Sam Houston State is not. Sam Houston State could still get an NIT at-large invitation, though, and is a pretty good candidate for that so long as they can avoid too bad a loss in the conference tourney.
They’re close! Haven’t run the model yet this morning (waiting for the AP Poll, which is a variable in our NCAAT seeding), but they’ll be right around the NIT cut line. Great win yesterday, fun to see them finishing strong.
Agreed – should be a lock at this point: Swept Iown, Beat Creighton at Creighton, Beat WI, Penn St…
Santa Clara is now out?
They were our first team out today. Got pushed out by Liberty moving in. Right on the bubble.
The Huskers should be in. They have several quality wins (Creighton, Maryland, two against Iowa) and have a top 40 schedule strength.
Would Byu need to beet Saint Mary’s to get into the Nit ?
To have a chance, probably. They’re a weird team to evaluate because their NET and KenPom are fine while their KPI and SOR are bad, but our best guess is that they need to beat Saint Mary’s to have any decent chance.
How is Oregon (80th in RPI) a #1 seed and Vanderbilt (41st in RPI) a #4 seed?
RPI isn’t used formally anymore by the NCAA or NIT selection committees. It’s fine, but too many conferences were manipulating it and stronger measures of how good teams are and how accomplished they are became available. Vanderbilt’s very accomplished as far as NIT contenders go, but Oregon is the better team, according to the best predictive ratings out there. Rightly or wrongly, the NIT committee seems to care about that.
What happens with Librty now that they lost by 1 to Kennesaw St in the championship?
They’ll most likely get an at-large bid to the NIT. It’ll be really surprising if they don’t. Look for them the next time we update this bracketology.
All NIT bids should be at-large. There should be no automatic bids and a team like Nebraska should be in it, as they have developed into easily a top 64 team.
Liberty did not have a strong strength of schedule this year and front ended their season with a lot of home games instead of playing the usual ASUN money schedule.
The ASUN has a rule that if the regular season champion does not win the ASUN Tourney they get a NIT aq.
The last time the ASUN had a conference regular season co-champion was Liberty and North Florida, but Liberty won the tourney, this put North Florida in the CIT not an NIT at large because the Ospreys did not win the regular season outright.
Liberty has now developed a habit of not accepting tourney bids below the NIT. So due to Liberty’s weak schedule this year and not winning the ASUN tourney, I can’t fathom an at large NIT berth for them.
CIT will probably offer, Liberty will turn it down.