The NIT quarterfinals are here, and if I might share an opinion…this is the best round of the tournament.
The first round is frantic and gory, a hellscape of mayhem that, while inspiring, often strikes fear into our hearts. In the first round of the NIT, we confront the human condition at its most vulnerable. This is why it’s so often compared to World War I, or to Black Friday at Walmart circa 2006, back before Amazon really figured out how to keep us all in our homes.
The second round is subtle. Many would-be converts bow out during the second round, uncloistering themselves and allowing NCAA T*urnament games to distract them. The NIT’s second round is, like the eyes, both necessary to our survival and a gateway for our sin.
The NIT Final Four is glorious, a moving human movement against the murky nights of spring. Carried out in temples, the NIT Final Four reminds us of the cosmic secrets our ancestors so intimately knew, secrets about light in the dark and knowing how to navigate Tyler Wahl doubleteams before the doubleteams are upon you and your shooters have all gone cold.
The NIT Championship is, some years, literal rapture. Why do you think there are often empty seats??
Yes, the NIT quarterfinals are the sweet spot. Four standalone games played in succession across two nights. Cinderellas still routinely in the mix, and if they’re not, Cinderellas only not in the mix because of historically dominant titans like those of 2015. Apathetic teams weeded out, dispatched to the Cuonzo Martin Shadow Realm™. Home courts. Regionality. High-quality basketball with a big celebration at the end.
So welcome, friends and family and web-crawling bots, to the best two nights of the sporting calendar. Here’s what to expect.
PEORIA: A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT
If you should find yourself in Belvidere, Illinois and you wish to find yourself in Peoria, stay on 20 west until you see the Cherry Valley watertower. Hop on 39 there and head south. That’s corn and beans out the window, and nothing else.
After you’ve crossed the river in La Salle, keep an eye out for the exit for Toluca. It’s Route 17, and it’ll take you to Lacon, where you’ll cross the river again right after you pass the M60A3 tank on the courthouse lawn. If you need gas, there’s a Casey’s across the street from the tank. Or, if you’d rather, there’s a tank across the street from the Casey’s. Fill ’er up, and soon you’ll be in Chillicothe—Grey Ghost country—before the hills start to rise and you find yourself pulling into Peoria. There, Caterpillar is somehow no longer the largest employer. Times change. Factories crumble. The Illinois River winds on.
It’s river rats tonight. Chattanooga. Bradley. Tennessee. Illinois. Shooters and scrappers and a long red-headed Canadian. Trains and rivers and the other timeless things.
I’ve maybe been looking at too many Edward Hopper paintings, but yesterday afternoon, this picture got me. The handmade signs. The shades half-drawn on the windows of a tired plane. The flag, blown backwards but proudly aloft. That familiar springtime sunshine you find in the heartland on a windy hopeful day, the kind that warms you more in fifty degrees than its summer cousin will when the mercury’s past ninety.
It’s an NIT quarterfinal picture. It isn’t glamorous. It isn’t forced. It’s a basketball team enjoying their last week or weeks together, strangers on the road, playing for each other and for their people back home.
Awaiting those Mocs at Carver Arena are the Bradley Braves, a team whose hell keeps mounting. Darius Hannah’s out now. Duke Deen’s still standing. Christian Davis is open on the wing. Even Deen’s banged up, but that comes with the territory when you’re five foot nothin’ one hundred and nothin’.
It’s offense versus offense here. Shots are going to be made. Deen and Davis and Trey Bonham and Honor Huff in the same building, with Collin Mulholland—the Canadian—still figuring out what he can be.
7:00 PM EDT. ESPN2. This game is what the movies want college basketball to be.
STILLWATER: THE ROWDIEST QUARTERFINAL IN THE COUNTRY
When Gallagher-Iba Arena was built, Iba wasn’t part of the name. Hank Iba was still coaching when they unveiled the maple floor.
The Aggies, as they were known at the time, were coming off a third-place finish in the inaugural NIT. They were a national power, and the nation knew. On December 9th of the ’38–39 season, Phog Allen brought the reigning Big Six Champions to town for a nonconference clash. It was the first game played at what would be named Gallagher Hall. The Aggies won it.
A lot’s changed since 1938. Oklahoma State’s no longer Oklahoma A&M. Oklahoma State and Kansas are in the same conference now. We’ve all gotten used to life with a lot fewer jump balls. (Before 1937–38, they used to happen after every made basket.) But those maple floorboards are the same, and Gallagher-Iba Arena a.k.a. Gallagher Hall a.k.a. the 4-H Club and Student Activities Building remains The Rowdiest Arena in the Country.
The Gallagher in the name is Ed Gallagher, legendary Oklahoma A&M wrestling coach. He might be in attendance tonight, reincarnated into North Texas head coach Ross Hodge. If you read NIT blogs regularly, you know North Texas, and you know Ross Hodge. If you’re new here, the longtime Grant McCasland accompanist is thriving as UNT’s second-year head coach. He’s a defensive mastermind and an instiller of confidence, and North Texas has its work cut out for it when it comes to keeping him long-term.
North Texas is the closest thing to a current NIT dynasty, 9–2 in NIT games these last four seasons. I don’t know whether it’s harder to make the NIT four times in a row or win at least a game in it all four times, but North Texas has done both. The 2023 national champions are back for more, one win away from a second Final Four appearance.
Across the scorer’s table, Oklahoma State first-year coach Steve Lutz is trying to recapture something Stillwater lost. The Eddie Sutton era’s a long way in the past, and while Marcus Smart and Cade Cunningham were great players, the years since Sutton haven’t brought much harvest. But Lutz has the Pokes playing their best ball of the season, winning three of four for the first time since December. Will it be enough for Bryce Thompson—the only current Cowboy who saw minutes in 2023—to avenge the last meeting between these teams? Will Abou Ousmane—a former North Texan himself—know the secrets to toppling Hodge?
9:00 PM EDT. ESPN2. This game is what basketball should be in the broader Texas region. (Everybody asks whether Oklahoma’s in the Midwest or South or Southwest. They never consider that it’s Texas’s sprawling backyard.)
Side note: Condolences to those who lost loved ones, homes, and businesses in the recent fires in and around Stillwater. Awful scenes.
ROGERS PARK: GREAT LAKES, GOOD BALL
On a scale from Northwestern to UIC, Loyola’s right below DePaul when it comes to how Chicago it is.
However.
It’s hard to beat the Ramblers when we’re talking Lake Michigan.
Less than a thousand feet from the world’s sixth-largest freshwater supply, Gentile Arena will tomorrow night host the kind of Rust Belt mid-major showdown on which college basketball is built. From Green Bay to Buffalo, something like ten percent of mid-major and low-major basketball teams are Great Lakes schools. Some—Loyola—enjoy rich histories. Some—Kent State—suffer largely anonymous pasts punctuated by mild success. Many—Youngstown State, to name a recent NIT character—are still waiting on their breakout. You can’t build a college football power just anywhere. College basketball’s slot machine structure makes it possible for anyone to dream.
For both Loyola and Kent State, the primary focus these days is their conference. With Ryan Odom leaving VCU, Loyola has a realistic chance to be the A-10’s best program in two years. Whether you think they will or won’t probably depends what you think of Drew Valentine, but combining the history with the location with the size and resources and momentum of the school, Loyola’s on the upswing. I get the idea people in the A-10 don’t like that all that much. Kent State, meanwhile, is like every other school in the MAC: It wants to rule the MAC. And much like every other school in the MAC, it’s not crazy to think it can pull it off. The MAC’s a funny league, a football-first organization that isn’t very good at football. Eminently lovable in part because of that cosmic plight, MACtion could mean any number of things if you give it a few years. Most of the time in basketball, it means that somebody’s decent and the others are mostly bad.
Kent State’s season turned around on February 4th, which is either coincidentally or not coincidentally the last game Anthony Morales played. I don’t know what happened there. Even betting reports never include any details. Morales, a grad transfer from Boston University, wasn’t there on senior night. Maybe he got hurt. Maybe he got benched. Maybe there’s a family situation going on. Whatever the case, Kent State’s 10–3 in games without Morales after opening MAC play 5–5 with him.
Loyola’s season turned around a week later, the night they survived Richmond in overtime. Prior to that game, the Ramblers were 14–9, .500 in the A-10, and recent losers of three in a row at the Diamond Head Classic. Since that game (including it), the Ramblers have only lost to a then-resurgent SLU in Missouri and to VCU by seven in the A-10 Tournament. It’s debatable whether this year’s team is better than last year’s. To advance in this year’s NIT, they might not have to be.
Tomorrow. 7:00 PM EDT. ESPN2. This game is the eternal struggle.
IRVINE: U(CI AND UAB) AND ME
UC Irvine is the best team remaining. Yaxel Lendeborg is the best player remaining. This could be the best game remaining? Probably not. All these games are great. And we have three more matchups we don’t even know yet!
I think I’m onto UC Irvine. I think I’ve figured them out. If you’re from afar, like me, and have only ever driven past and around Irvine, you hear “UC ___” and see Anteaters and “Zot!” and think, Those kooky Californians. Always up to something! I bet they do fun things at that school, like drink tequila and reenact the movie Old School. But then you start noticing that nobody’s ever told you they’re from Irvine, and you wonder if that means it’s an industrial city, because you got it confused with Oxnard once. So, you hop on the ol’ Internet™, and across eight different accounts of Irvine, the first thing you always read is, “This place is really safe.”
Now.
Safety is good.
But if you have a massive college in your Southern Californian town, shouldn’t there be some fun involved?
For a long time, I knew UC Irvine was a big school with great academics and a lot of resources, and I wondered why they were a perpetual mid-major. It turns out Irvine’s just really safe. (And evidently a little Truman Show-esque with the city planning? Discuss amongst yourselves.)
Birmingham, on the other hand, is not safe. Lot of murders in Birmingham. And Birmingham’s cool! We had a great misty night in Birmingham a couple Christmases back. Birmingham is a great city in which to have spent a misty Christmas night.
All of this gets back to the New Orleans Theory of Cities, which holds that murder builds character. I don’t suggest anybody test that theory—murder is bad, murder is not worth it, I would rather live in Irvine—but hey. Gotta hear all sides.
Long story short, Bent Leuchten vs. Yaxel Lendeborg is the universe’s encore to Duke Deen vs. Honor Huff. Different weight classes. Same sport. Same thrill. Russell Turner builds and builds and builds in Orange County, but UC Irvine has yet to break through. Andy Kennedy wins and wins and wins in Birmingham, usually when it’s least expected of him. Institutions of the sport make up our NIT quarterfinal finale. Here’s hoping it’ll be a fitting sendoff. (Not to be confused with fitting Senderoff, which is Kent State’s coach.)
Tomorrow. 9:00 PM EDT. ESPN2. This game is basketball’s answer to its Steph Curry era.
**
Note: A previous version of this post incorrectly said Oklahoma A&M did not play in the 1938 NIT. Not sure how we messed that up, but we did. They played in it. They got third place.
Excellent.
Let’s GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO[inhales]OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO[passes out]