Friends.
We are on the front end of quite the NIT day.
But we’ll get to that.
First, we need to talk about St. John’s.
St. John’s is the king. They’ve got the most rings. Their home court (ish) still hosts the Final Four. The NIT and St. John’s are intertwined like the Roanoke airport and overly combative gate agents. They cannot be separated, and if you have trouble with either, the other will call security on your ass.
Lately, though, it’s been tough for St. John’s. They haven’t made the NIT in six years. They haven’t made it past the second round since their 2003 championship. Even that championship has been “vacated” by the “NCAA” for “paying Abe Keita.”
And yet, again and again, we ask if this might be the year.
The latest jolt to our hopes comes in the form of their 3-0 start, which could grow to 4-0 over the next couple hours as they join BYU to dance the dance of our NIT dreams in Uncasville, Connecticut. Will winning games in the Big East be challenging? Of course. But St. John’s is building a stash, and the Boston College notch in the belt isn’t half bad.
Other notes, with a glorious NIT day ahead of us:
- Penn State welcomes VCU to town. Can NITtany Nation come together in the wake of Pat Chambers’s departure? Can VCU continue to build the most adequate NIT case we can imagine a team building?
- Duquesne and UNC-Greensboro each try to earn themselves an additional sentence in future enraged NIT Bracketology comments. Overzealous college basketball fans everywhere lick their lips.
- Seton Hall visits Rhode Island, with the empty gym in Kingston only adding to the drama and mystique.
- South Dakota State goes to Ames, where Iowa State is desperate to keep their record within a respectable distance of .500.
- Providence and Alabama match up in a Maui/Asheville 5th Place Game that makes a compelling case for the existence and beneficence of a god.
- San Francisco’s back, and they’re playing in Reno, and we are busy on WebMD because the chills we’ve gotten aren’t stopping.
- Mizzou plays Oregon in Omaha. Why is it in Omaha? Why are two teams traveling to a third location in the middle of a pandemic? I do not know, but I hope the gym is dimly lit, everyone is whispering, and Mizzou plays well and then collapses because I want a rope-a-dope out of those cats that ends with them an NIT 1-seed and my old little league teammate who went to Missouri getting some folks into our NIT pool.
- USC looked great yesterday, which is perfect because they will later fail and join us where we can all hiss and spit at Andy Enfield.
- Marquette lost at home to Oklahoma State, and we’re rubbing our hands.
- Western Kentucky got wrecked by Louisville, pouring just enough accelerant on their fire to eliminate much of the risk of them accidentally overshooting the NIT.
- Providence and Davidson played each other. One of them lost. The rest of us won.
