I woke up this morning to a text from my dad making sure I’d seen Tom Crean’s rant about the NIT. A few hours later, my mother-in-law sent me an article recapping it. Many people in my life wanted to make sure I had seen Tom Crean defend my favorite tournament. Tom Crean. The NIT’s knight in shining armor.
For those who weren’t watching the NIT Selection Show (what the fuck, guys, I thought we were friends), Crean’s message boiled down to this: Even if not every player on the team wants to play, coaches have a responsibility to their players to play games when the opportunity is there. You only get so many basketball games in your lifetime. Players deserve the opportunity to play them.
I don’t want to talk too much about the opt-outs. It’s going to be a great NIT, partly thanks to disinterested coaches exiting it, and we’re going to talk more opt-out below anyway, so it’s already getting too much focus. This angle, though, is important. Because while a lot of fans like to say their program is “too good for the NIT” (always hilarious immediately after that program made the NIT), what coaches like Rick Pitino said, by opting out, was that their players were too bad for the NIT. If the justification is that the coaches need to go recruit, the implication is that the coaches need to replace the players they have. These players? Not worth another one to five games. The new players might be.
Beyond the prudence of the point, though…
Tom Crean is the NIT’s knight in shining armor?
Tom Crean??
This is awesome!
It is also surreal.
When we started All Things NIT back in 2017, it was partly because of Tom Crean. Among other 2017 NIT hilarities (it was a great NIT), Indiana declined a home game in the first round, and the speculation was that with Tom Crean’s firing set to happen right after Indiana’s final loss, they didn’t want a half-empty Assembly Hall chanting “Fire Tom Crean” with the students on spring break. It was a funny circumstance that probably wasn’t funny at all to Crean.
Now, the tables have turned. In the last twenty years, no coach at Indiana has put together a team as good as Tom Crean’s third-best, and the lesson for us is clear: Be nice to coaches on the hot seat. One day, they may passionately defend your favorite tournament on national television.
There’s a great picture from 1970 of a Holiday Inn marquee reading:
WELCOME
COACH AL MCGUIRE
N I T FRIEND
It’s a picture that means a lot. One of those things that reminds you what’s important in life. Some of us want to be good parents, or good children, or good neighbors. All of us want to be an NIT friend.
Crean might not have done for the NIT what McGuire so famously did. But who could meet that level? I say we give him the title. Tom Crean. NIT friend.
The Biggest NIT Snubs
Who got snubbed??
A lot of people are upset High Point didn’t get the NIT invite, and I understand that. 23–8 against Division I teams, Big South regular season champions, kenpom number only a point and a half or so behind Cornell’s. It’s probably not High Point’s fault that they couldn’t get bigger schools to schedule them (though I do always wonder whether schools could get games if they offered to not take the buy game check, or to buy the game themselves). I can see why that was a bummer. I also think people don’t understand just how tough a schedule Xavier played, and why 16 wins against that schedule is actually a ton.
By Wins Above Bubble, the most deserving team to not receive an NIT invitation appears to have been Tarleton State, who is ineligible for NCAA-sanctioned postseason competition as they complete their transition to Division I. After them, it’s Rutgers, who went 15–17, also against a great schedule. Santa Clara comes next, followed by Maryland, again sub-.500 against great competition. Then, you get to High Point.
Honestly, I don’t know if we had any really big snubs. Maybe you could sub Santa Clara and High Point in for Saint Joe’s and North Texas in a perfect world, but given our guess about how much time the committee had, given the anticipation for tomorrow’s Seton Hall/Saint Joe’s game at Seton Hall’s small, historic, on-campus Walsh Gymnasium, and given that North Texas is the defending champion? No complaints here. High Point, we are sad for you, as we have said now four or five different times in various places. But we really like this NIT field nonetheless.
Attendance vs. Ratings
Tyler Cronin from 3 Bid League, an Atlantic 10 podcast, asked me last week if the NIT would consider prioritizing good storylines as it decided which teams to invite. The team we were discussing was Duquesne, who sadly played their way out of our reach but might have played crosstown big brother Pitt in an alternate universe. The conversation pivoted to ratings and attendance, and it got me thinking about how I measure success for the NIT versus how the NIT likely measures its own success.
The NIT will probably survive in eternity if it makes a lot of money. The best way to do that is to have great TV ratings. Or, you know, solid ones. And yet when I think of the most thrilling NIT moments in my time watching it, they all involve a good crowd. Penn State pulling away down the stretch at MSG. Nebraska playing the Johnny Trueblood games in 2019. That Utah Valley scene last year in the quarterfinals. What makes a successful NIT is probably ratings. What makes a great NIT is a packed crowd. Get the crowd there, and as college basketball always teaches, the moments will follow.
To square this circle: The NIT figures to have some pretty good crowds this year, especially at the Final Four if some of the more local teams get there. I think that’ll translate to a broadcast, and I think that’ll lead to more eyeballs. Not necessarily while it’s happening, but down the line.
About Those Curses
So.
I promised to do some cursing.
Official statement a.k.a. tweet from NIT Stu, 1:25 PM Texas Time, March 13th
Now that we’ve had our first #NIT lock, I want to announce something I’ve been holding in:
If anyone declines an NIT bid this year, I will be cursing that school, that program, and/or famous supporters of that team. Have been researching witchcraft, voodoo magic, and Babe Ruth.
To be fair, I was exaggerating when I talked about the research. I sat next to someone at a coffee shop last week who was reading quietly aloud to herself in a foreign language, and while I think she was just learning that language, I did contemplate the possibility at the time that she might be a witch.
Still, I promised curses, so at some point, I will be cursing entities associated with Oklahoma, Pitt, St. John’s, Washington, Mississippi, Syracuse, Memphis, and Indiana. Maybe Florida State, depending whether we hear any reports on whether they opted out or got snubbed (now that would be the real curse). I will consider backing off if any of these programs’ fanbases start charity drives beseeching me to not curse them. These are my terms.
Etc.
Things that aren’t the NIT just kidding the first two are still the NIT and the third comes from an NIT in our past:
- Please join the NIT Bracket Challenge! I think you will have fun. If you do not have fun, it is very easy to ignore.
- NIT picks! We’ll have our brackets up at some point tomorrow, along with an NIT preview of some sort. We also need to preview the upcoming Joe Kelly season, because that begins in Korea at a time that translates to 5 AM Wednesday here in Texas. Between that and getting back from Indy to Chicago to watch my favorite reliever play my favorite baseball team the day after the NIT Championship, I am going to die this NIT from Joe Kelly-related fatigue. What a great way that will be to go. Also, the preview will talk about the Chaquetas. Unbelievable stuff there. (Short version: A minor league baseball team is rebranding itself into a Joe Kelly tribute team. I’m not joking.)
- Credit to our guy Shaka Smart for almost winning another Big East Tournament. College basketball media needs baseball media to explain to them how bad obliques are. Tyler Kolek playing through any sort of oblique injury would be unbelievable. He has to be really hobbled, right?
- I’m sad the Packers cut Aaron Jones. I get it, and I thought Josh Jacobs was older than he was, but it is just sad. Also, I think it’s funny when Bears fans don’t realize that the problem with Bears quarterbacks is not drafting or luck and is instead the Bears. Good luck to Justin Fields, seems like a good guy.
- I’m assuming things are going poorly for the Bulls. If not, then they still are, but only behind the scenes.
- I have admittedly been paying no attention to the Senators, but I saw a Claude Giroux slapshot to win a shootout and I thought that was pretty neat.
- Burnley finally won, and then they got some help overnight because Nottingham Forest was docked four points for financial violations? Honestly, I don’t want the lads to stay up if it has to come through penalties handed down mid-season. Either do them retroactively, to the season affected, or put them in place before the next year.
- A normal amount of time for me to eat a pie, I think, is about four days. Also, don’t put pies sideways in your grocery bags before a twenty-minute walk home. That went badly for the other groceries in the bag. Streusel all over the place.
