We’re seeing a lot of hate online for the “Way Too Early Top 25” rankings, and we agree with it uniformly. You must publish your rankings appropriately early. Which is why we are not publishing a Way Too Early Top 25 today, but are instead publishing an Appropriately Early Ten Teams Who Could Win the NIT.
This is not an exhaustive list. There are more than ten teams out there who could win the NIT. This is, though, the ten teams most highly on our radar. Meaning: This matters.
Without further ado:
Dayton
Does Dayton bring a lot of guys back? I don’t know. Was Dayton all that good this year? Not really. Do either of those things matter? Nope. Not for Dayton. Dayton is at a point in history where every single year, it’s not unreasonable to expect them to contend for an NIT title. All they do is finish with ten or twelve losses.
Florida Atlantic
I know, I know. This would be a big step up for them. But think about it: They should be good enough to win if they make it, and even in the American, they’re going to have a lot of opportunities for just the sort of bad losses you need to make the greatest tournament in the land. The American this coming year is basically its own bad teams, Memphis, and the good teams from Conference USA. That’s a league that can send a good team to the NIT. Which reminds us:
Saint Mary’s
By similar situation, Saint Mary’s is always an NIT threat. They could be in the top ten on KenPom and still make the NIT if they lose the right games and win the wrong ones. 2016 and 2018 weren’t that long ago.
Butler
We’ve waited long enough. The hometown kids.
St. John’s built itself into an NIT dynasty by winning NIT Championships played on its own floor. Will Butler follow the mold? It’s Thad Matta’s second year at the helm, which has many expecting a step upwards. How big a step? That’s the crucial question here. With the NIT Final Four at Hinkle Fieldhouse, Butler could conceivably play five straight postseason games in front of a raucous Indianapolis crowd. That sort of thing matters.
St. John’s
Speaking of St. John’s: Ever hear of Rick Pitino?
It’s been said of Pitino that he’s the best single-game college basketball coach in the land, which has a certain brand of people saying he’ll be able to get St. John’s into the top 25 in his first year. Us? We’re the reasonable ones. We don’t think St. John’s will be one of the 25 best teams during the regular season. We think they’ll be even better. We think they’ll contend for that elusive national championship Pitino has never won.
Michigan
We need a Big Ten team on this list. If we don’t put a Big Ten team on this list, we aren’t being serious. The Big Ten has been the most successful NIT conference for the last few decades, and that’s even including a time period where the league was too good to get teams to both miss the NCA* *********t and finish at or above .500. The token one? Michigan, narrowly edging out Iowa. They’re losing a lot of talent whether Hunter Dickinson sticks around or not, and they’ll presumably bring in a lot of talent, and the median expectation there is that they’ll end up right where they started, which is: NIT contention. They were among the favorites this season. That taste of failure should motivate.
College of Charleston
Keep an eye on the Cougars. Pat Kelsey wins basketball games, this program is going in the right direction, and it ran a lot of underclassmen in its rotation this year. Some of those are into the transfer portal, yes, but part of what Kelsey’s done so successfully is get talent onto that campus. Don’t sleep on the CAA.
UNC Wilmington
On that topic: With Conference USA gutted, someone’s going to be poised to fill that space in the landscape. The CAA was not just Charleston this year, and it hasn’t just been Charleston the last few years. You’ve got Hofstra. You’ve got Towson. You’ve got UNC Wilmington. The Seahawks are supposed to bring a ton of guys back from a team that wasn’t half bad this year. Shades of 2022 Wyoming, who nearly made the NIT. Shades of 2023 Utah Valley, in some ways.
Tennessee
Heck yes I’m serious. (That’s why I didn’t put Miami on this list—if I wasn’t being serious, I’d include an ACC team, even though the ACC hasn’t won one of these in 23 years.)
Can you not picture Tennessee suffering a lot of roster turnover, missing Zakai Zeigler for the first few months of the season, and getting extremely inconsistent with a youth-heavy lineup? Can you not picture Rick Barnes pulling them together down the stretch? Can you not picture Tennessee winning the NIT just two years after a bunch of Vols fans puffed their chests about removing the NIT banner from Thompson-Boling Arena? Because I can picture it. I can picture it right down to the 56–40 final score in the championship game.
Texas Tech
Lastly, Texas Tech. A potential Grant McCasland repeat.
The deal with Texas Tech is that it’s a pretty big reset situation right now. Still, it’s going to be able to get talent, because it’s been able to get talent for the last decade or thereabouts. If McCasland could build an NIT champion in six years at North Texas, it might be a stretch to say he can do it in one over in Lubbock. But after what we saw in Las Vegas, how could we not believe? The toughest team wins, after all, making the question: How quickly can Coach Mac toughen these guys up?
The Play-In Tournament Counts
I’m imagining everyone else hashed this out last year, but the Bulls weren’t involved, so I did no hashing. With the Bulls involved this year, I would like to hash: If it isn’t a regular season game and it isn’t an exhibition, it’s the postseason, and that means the NBA Play-In Tournament counts as the Playoffs. If the Bulls somehow don’t make it, I’ll back off and let others hash, but for right now, I’m hashing. This is a playoff appearance if the Bulls clinch tonight.
