A few of you told me you accidentally unsubscribed from the NIT Bracket Challenge emails. A likely story! Either way, here’s all of them published so far, for those of you looking to relive the 2026 National Invitation Tournament.
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Sunday, March 15th, 11:49 PM EDT
Subject: Fill Out Your NIT Bracket (Please)
Once upon a time—the year was 1938—someone had the bright idea to play a single-elimination tournament at the end of the college basketball season. That someone? Not sure, to be honest. That tournament? The NIT.
The NIT’s role in the construction of modern Western culture is easy to forget. But without the NIT, would college basketball look anything like it looks today? Without the NIT, would Madison Square Garden be the icon it became? Without the NIT, would freedom have endured the assaults of 1939 or the standoff with totalitarian bureaucracy which defined the rest of the 20th century? (I’m talking about the creation and growth of the NCAA T*urnament. Obviously.)
Times are different. The NIT semifinals are now played at Hinkle Fieldhouse, a different kind of basketball cathedral. Instead of a six-team field, grace has guided our sport to a 32-team tournament. Players are no longer at risk of contracting polio.
The NIT, though, stands the test of time, and three weeks from this very night, someone will lift the trophy which has defined young men’s dreams for 92 years. So, as we embark: Won’t you join us on this journey?
Our NIT Bracket Challenge is back for its tenth season, and we’d be honored if you submitted a bracket again this year. Everything you need to know can be found at this link. Games start at 6 PM Eastern on Tuesday. That’s an hour earlier than normal.
We’ll be back in your inbox as the week goes on, pondering questions like whether Bruce Pearl was using reverse psychology, whether Mark Madsen can make Cal a basketball school, and whether coincidences exist or if 1939 was even more nefarious than we already know it to be. For now, let’s enjoy this. Let’s enjoy each other’s company. And let’s fill out some NIT brackets. They say hope is a 32-team word.
Roanoke was an inside job,
NIT Stu
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Tuesday, March 17th, 2:14 PM EDT
Subject: Last Call for NIT Brackets
We’re less than four hours out from the start of the NIT, so we’ll keep this short. Brackets are due at 6 PM Eastern Time, when the nation will collectively turn off truTV for the month and turn on the ESPN Family of Networks. Our opening game? George Mason vs. Liberty in Fairfax. Patriots on one side. Liberty on the other. Just like our founders envisioned.
Here’s the link to submit your bracket. That’s also where you’ll be able to find our scoreboard later tonight, once the day’s games are done.
If you’re looking for help, specifically with your NIT bracket, Joe Stunardi keeps simulating the tournament 10,000 times. Here are the latest numbers. South Alabama, your work is cut out for you.
Finally, if you want to stoke your NIT fervor or contemplate your place in the NIT’s universe, we wrote up a little State of the NIT post yesterday on where the tournament stands and where it’s going as college sports continue to change.
RIP St. Patrick,
NIT Stu
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Wednesday, March 18th, 1:47 AM EDT
Subject: The NIT Is Underway (Come Check Your Bracket)
Nine years ago, Georgia Tech made an improbable run to the NIT Championship, and I—in the immediate wake of my NIT conversion experience—became convinced Josh Pastner was the best coach in the country.
Turns out, I was right the whole time.
UNLV just upset UC Irvine, and Pastner’s boys are running rebelliously on to the second round. The victory capped a moving night of hoops, one which saw massive comebacks, heroics off the bench, and six straight missed free throws down the stretch in New Haven.
If you’d like to check your bracket, our scoreboard is here. You can also dig into your bracket in this spreadsheet. Apologies for the unwieldiness. Next year, I hope to use AI to build a better site or app for this. That, in fact, is why I created AI in the first place. To ease the NIT bracket experience. If AI ushers in an era of unprecedented health and prosperity? You’ll have the NIT to thank. If AI ends humanity as we know it? Well, at least we’ll have finally gotten rid of the NCAA T*urnament.
We’re down to nine perfect brackets. Lord knows what awaits us tomorrow. The biggest bracket-wreckers tonight were UNC Wilmington (70% of us had Yale), Liberty (61% had George Mason), Seattle (58% had St. Thomas winning on the road in front of that awesome video board that hangs extraordinarily close to the court), and UNLV (pour one out for the defending runners up, picked by 57% of us to make the second round).
All eight of our most popular champions are still alive: Auburn (20%) survived South Alabama and also one of its players defecting. New Mexico (16%) hosts Sam Houston tomorrow, the greatest of Texas’s founding fathers. Oklahoma State (8%) stuck Gallagher-Iba Arena back at the top of the bucket list. Dayton (8%) starts its road trip in Peoria at sundown. Cal (6%) hosts UIC in yet another showdown between Californian tax dollars and Flames. Wichita State (5%) held off Wyoming. Tulsa (4%) escaped Stephen F. Austin despite an ill-timed foul. Wake Forest (3%) squares off with the Naval Academy at the very moment the Midshipmen prepare for war. We know Josh Pastner loves his country. Does Steve Forbes?
Despite strong performances from the most popular picks, plenty of brackets did see their champions go down. Among those losing tonight were my wife, my dog, and Ken Pomeroy. Sayonara to Yale (woof), Wyoming (great meteorology school), and Stephen F. Austin (not sure what possessed my wife to take the Jacks, seeing as she’s always rebuffed my efforts to vacation in Nacogdoches).
As for the tiebreaker…
It might not break any ties. Nearly two thirds of us guessed either three or four A-10 teams will make the 2027 NIT. I did not really think this through. Respect, though, to the one of you who entered a score in that space (82–76), the two of you who entered your own names in all caps, the one of you who guessed that the Big East would absorb the Atlantic 10, the two of you who specified exactly which four A-10 teams will make it, and the one of you who somehow entered my brother’s wedding anniversary. (I’m guessing you were trying to say “3 or 4” and that my google sheet autocorrected “3–4” to “March 4th.”) We will cross all bridges when we come to them. At this rate, Josh Pastner is going to take over the world by the end of the month anyway, breaking not only the yoke which is our frail mortality but also any ties. And not a lot of us picked him to do that!
But there I go, expecting Josh Pastner to take over the world again. I suppose it’s time to get ready for bed. Thanks for submitting an NIT bracket. It would be really sad if I only did this with my dog.
Bona NIT,
NIT Stu
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Thursday, March 19th, 1:33 AM EDT
Subject: Return to Reno – NIT Edition
In 2018, a fresh-faced zealot stepped off a plane in Reno on a Monday night in March. His eyes were filled with expectation. His pants were covered in Biscoff cookie. His backpack was filled with magazines. I’d been gifted a New Yorker subscription for Christmas and I overestimated how much I’d read on the plane.
I made an assumption that year, and the assumption went like this: If basketball fans go to Las Vegas for the first round of the NCAA T*urnament, they must spend the NIT first round in Reno. Every Reno has a Las Vegas. Every NIT has an NCAA T*urnament. I stepped off that Delta flight, pants absolutely coated with cookie, and I stepped into what I believed to be a rapturous two-day festival celebrating the National Invitation Tournament.
I’m still not sure I was wrong. We NIT fans live an underground existence, tormented and teased by state and church and even occasionally our own kin. It’s very possible I just didn’t find the clandestine gathering of like-minded NIT stalwarts. After all, I never made it over to the Peppermill.
Such as it was, eight years ago I spent three nights and two days alone in Reno, poking around the town by day and watching the NIT by night. At the time, my presence probably seemed insignificant to that city. Besides the sportsbook teller who scoffed at my request to bet on the NIT, few even noticed I was there. But looking back now, I wonder if the universe steered Reno and myself together that week for a reason. It wasn’t the universe saying, “Reno, the NIT is here.” It was the universe saying, “Reno, the NIT will come back.”
Well, Reno, the NIT has now come back. Fourteen years after Olek Czyz led the Wolf Pack to that second round victory over Bucknell, tonight Vaughn Weems picked up the dusty mantle. Rebirth on the Truckee. Nevada through to the round of 16.
But enough about my spiritual connection to Reno. You want to hear about the bracket.
The NIT continued to play mostly nice tonight, with over 80% of you keeping your champion alive as we look towards the weekend. Of the eight teams who lost, only Utah Valley and Colorado State were picked to win in the majority of our brackets. (Speaking of Utah Valley—what a crowd in Orem. So many memories of 2023 in that building.) Still, there was heartbreak afoot. Two brackets managed to get each of the first 13 games right, but both of them—Mike Rutherford and Jack Wert—had Murray State pulling off the upset. By the time the second halves began in Fort Collins and Berkeley, no perfect NIT brackets remained. Reno giveth. Reno taketh away. Blessed be the name of Reno.
If you want to check your bracket, our scoreboard is updated here. Our NIT probabilities will be updated in the morning, if you’d like to at least think about basketball on men’s hoops’ day off.
The weekend schedule isn’t fully announced, but we do know there’ll be games Saturday night, so we’ll be back in your inbox after those. Where will those games be? Funny enough, in Reno. And Wilmington. Excited about that one. So close to Croatoan. And they have a battleship!
Every Wilmington has a Charleston,
NIT Stu
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Sunday, March 22nd, 12:21 AM EDT
Subject: The Daytonian Exile, Explained
I don’t know a whole lot about Ohio high school basketball. I have some guesses (they’re high schoolers). I have some theories (they’re in Ohio). I even have some inferences (they’re playing basketball). But on the whole, there’s only one thing I know with certainty about high school basketball in the state of Ohio:
Its state tournament is played the first weekend of the NIT, at UD Arena in Dayton.
For the third time in five years, Dayton gave up a second round home game, traveling to Wilmington tonight rather than hosting the Seahawks. This happened last year against Chattanooga. This happened in 2022 against Vanderbilt. Dayton has a basketball problem, and that problem is that other basketball keeps using their gym.
We talk a lot about the NCAA’s occupation of NIT land. NCAA T*urnament location scouts knew what they were doing when they put the First Four on the banks of the Great Miami. Dayton will never play a first round NIT home game as long as the siege lasts. But giving up the second round too? To high schoolers? There’s gotta be a way to avoid this.
I have a theory about what’s happening here:
Dayton, the NCAA, and the OHSAA (wish they called it OSHA, as a guy who likes confusion) could presumably fix this with one offseason call. Put the college game on Sunday night and play the high school games with the NIT decals on the court. It would take a little maneuvering, but it’s possible. College teams have played games at 9 PM local time for stupider reasons.
The reason (I think) this doesn’t happen is that if someone at Dayton said, “Hey, we gotta plan for this NIT second round situation, it keeps happening,” other people at Dayton would say, “We don’t plan for the NIT!!!!” This is the curse, guys. This is how they keep us down.
But that first someone is right. It does keep happening. This is the third time in five years Dayton had to give up a second round home game.
What an environment at Trask Coliseum. What a win by the Flyers. When the game tipped off, I told my son I didn’t know if the 2013 Baylor Bears could win in front of that crowd. The 2026 Dayton Flyers did. Make of it what you will.
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I don’t know a ton about Indiana high school basketball, but I know way more than I know about Ohio. Where to begin? For our purposes: Steve Alford.
To a certain kind of Hoosier (talking person from Indiana, not Indiana University person), Steve Alford is a really big deal. A few years ago, a guy explained to me why he’s a Nevada fan by saying, “I grew up near New Castle.” Likewise, for Steve Alford, Indiana is a really big deal. What other state would launch this particular brand of stardom, one which can turn places like Albuquerque and Reno into New Castle’s sister cities?
And yet.
If my kenpom clicking is correct, Steve Alford hasn’t coached a game on Indiana soil since December 1st, 2012, when his New Mexico Lobos went to Terre Haute.
That can change with one more win.
Nevada escaped Liberty, Reno went nuts, and the Wolf Pack now either host Seattle or travel to Auburn in the quarterfinals. What a way to start the second round.
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If you’ve scrolled this far and haven’t lost sight of your original objective, here’s the link to the NIT Bracket Challenge scoreboard. We have a three-way tie for first place between John Hollinger, William Hennum, and Timothy/StormCrowCentral. Is this the John Hollinger who was once an iconic basketball analytics blogger? I still don’t know. But if Oklahoma State beats Wichita State, we might have to go find out.
That’s all for tonight. I’m off to try to go to bed. Emphasis on “try.” Lately, my dog Fargo has developed a habit of walking to my bedside as soon as I pull up the covers, turning around, and sticking her butt in front of my face until I scratch her haunches. I’m a pushover. I scratch them. Like Dayton’s quest for an NIT home game, it’s exhausting and endearing, and it’s costing me sleep.
They should have let the battleship fire its guns,
NIT Stu
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Monday, March 23rd, 12:06 AM EDT
Subject: Handling the Water Cooler as an NIT Fan
Some of you probably have jobs, and some of you probably go to an office or a similar place of work for those jobs, and some of you probably have friends at those jobs, whether you’d call them that or not. This means tomorrow, some of you might be subjected to the question:
“How about that Iowa game?”
Now, I’m not your mother, and as your non-mother, I don’t get to decide how you respond. But a suggestion:
View this as an opportunity.
View this as an opportunity to spread the good news of the NIT.
Sure, it’d be easy to punch that person’s lights out. Sure, it’d be easy to get HR involved. Sure, it’d be easy to go full Milton from Office Space and burn the building to the ground. But is that what we, the NIT community, are going to be? Arsonists? Snitches? Pugilists? (Being a bunch of pugilists would actually be really cool. Problem is, I don’t think we would win as many fights as we’d need to.)
In the beatitudes, Christ tells his followers, “Blessed are the meek.” For decades, basketball theologians have quarreled over the meaning of these four words. Was Jesus an early fan of Portland Pilots women’s basketball coach Michael Meek? Was Jesus compelling us to take a lot of charges? Is this about avoiding technical fouls? Surely, he’s not telling us to let the NIT go un-defended, right??
If we reference the oldest available version of Matthew’s gospel, the one written in Greek, the word used in this section is “praus.” St. Paul wrote his letters in Greek, and when Paul uses “praus,” it’s commonly translated these days as “gentleness.” Gentle. Be gentle. Judge not your neighbor the NCAA T*urnament fan. Be a good Samaritan out there.
So. Tomorrow. When someone says, “How about that Iowa game?” Pull them aside. Look at them gently. Think about that ending to Illinois State vs. Wake Forest. And say to them:
“How about Johnny Kinziger?”
This is how a dialogue starts.
And if my experiences are any indication, that dialogue is going to end when you pull out your phone and suggest watching the entire second half of Saint Joe’s vs. Cal together, because if that dumb bastard didn’t hear about Johnny Kinziger, he sure as hell wasn’t watching the Hawks pull off a comeback for the ages in Berkeley.
Our NIT Bracket Challenge scoreboard has been updated after tonight’s action. Between Wake Forest, Cal, and Oklahoma State all losing, it was a bloodbath for many of you. To those who were spared: Don’t rest easy. The NIT’s coming back Tuesday night. And in the quarterfinals, no one is safe. Not even St. Paul, if he finally filled out a bracket for this thing.
Until next time, when we discuss how to use workplace references to popular TV show “The Pitt” to bring up New Mexico’s arena, The Pit,
NIT Stu
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Tuesday, March 24th, 11:41 PM EDT
Subject: Let’s Hear It for The Pit
It’s tempting, on a night like this, to let the NIT speak for itself. After all, we all watched, didn’t we?
*Nervous silence*
We all watched Tulsa come out of the gate like a, well, Golden Hurricane.
*Some slow nods*
We all watched Wichita State roar back, the ghosts of 2011 riding high at their side.
*Nods accelerate*
We all watched Miles Barnstable and Tulsa get their feet back beneath them, rise from the quicksand, and finish the job.
*More nods. Someone whispers,“He’s the one from Sheboygan.”*
And then, of course, we all saw what happened in The Pit.
*Nervous glances. Shifting of feet.*
We saw Saint Joe’s give New Mexico all they could handle for that first half, putting the Lobos on their heels in the NIT for the first time since that Utah Valley upset in 2023.
*Nods return.*
And then. Well. We know what The Pit can do.
*More nods. Confident now.*
We’ve long held that the NIT quarterfinals are the best two nights of basketball of the season. There’s no hesitation anymore. The games are played at a (pretty) high level. Best of all, these are the last home games anyone will play all season.
They feel like it.
Take a moment to think about the exact kind of person who buys season tickets to Tulsa or New Mexico basketball. The kind who shows up against Oklahoma Christian in November, who spends Valentine’s Day sweating out a conference showdown with Wyoming.
That guy drove home a winner tonight, and he’ll be a winner for the next seven months, a winner through spring rain and summer heat and the falling leaves of autumn, until Oklahoma Christian and East Texas A&M roll back into town and it’s time to buy a popcorn from the favorite concession stand, the one that guy hasn’t seen in half a year.
Whatever happens in Indianapolis next week, Tulsa and New Mexico fans got the job done for their teams. Tulsa and New Mexico fans drove home winners. It wasn’t senior night. It was even better. Long live the NIT.
The Bracket Challenge scoreboard is updated. 52% of us still have our champion in the mix. That number only goes down from here, of course, so engage in your rituals and say a prayer to George Mikan (if you’re into that kind of thing). Tomorrow, Dayton and Auburn fans get a chance to drive home winners. Tomorrow, Illinois State and Nevada get a chance to rip out hearts. We say it again:
Long live the NIT.
Bronson Arroyo should’ve kept the cornrows,
NIT Stu
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Wednesday, March 25th, 11:39 PM EDT
Subject: The NIT Final Four Is Set
I’m not going to try to sell you on FCS football. Not in this email. I’ve been through enough interventions over my FCS habit. I’ve stared down enough “ultimatums.” Would I recommend the product? Of course. But there’s a baggage that accompanies it, and that baggage is the looks of confusion, concern, and exasperated fury thrown your way when you steal the remote at a Christmas party, turn off the YouTube video of a fireplace, and turn on UC Davis vs. Illinois State, then proceed to explain Redbirds quarterback Tommy Rittenhouse (there’s no known relation, guys) to everyone who passes within believable earshot. There’s no known relation, guys!
Speaking of the Redbirds.
What a year.
First, a Cinderella run to the FCS National Championship Game. Now, a Cinderella run to the NIT Final Four. This is like when Joakim Noah and Tim Tebow were both at Florida, except Chase Walker’s competing in a legitimate basketball tournament and nobody on the Illinois State football team is going to kill anybody in a few years. (They promised.) Besides that? Exact same. Right down to Normal and Gainesville, which are basically carbon copies of each other.
Opposite the Redbirds? It’s the Money–Where–Their–Mouth–Is Auburn Tigers, whose coach’s dad spent weeks talking about how easy it is to beat mid-majors and who has now beaten three mid-majors in a row. This is like when Tyrese Haliburton’s dad used to pick fights at AAU games by telling other parents his kid was going to the NBA, and now Tyrese Haliburton’s in the NBA. Bet you didn’t see that one coming, parents! Frickin’ idiots. (The fight thing is a rumor. I wasn’t there. But I mean, we’re all familar with John Haliburton’s work.)
As for the brackets…
None of us got the entire NIT Final Four correct. Not a one. Not you, not me, and certainly not Aaron Hernandez. Did anyone get three? Sure. Plenty of people got three of the four teams. But either they underestimated the Lobos, they underestimated the Redbirds, they underestimated the Golden Hurricane, or they don’t like Bruce Pearl and were hoping Auburn would lose.
Here’s the full scoreboard, if you want to check where you stand. Three games to go. All next week. We’ll probably be back in your inbox before then, mostly to remind you the NIT is still happening and you should watch. (Or, if you’re in Indianapolis, attend!) But also, as one does, to preview the NIT Final Four.
Swing sets are cool,
NIT Stu
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Thursday, April 2nd, 11:43 PM EDT
Subject: Goodnight From Hinkle Fieldhouse (and Waffle House)
No Midwestern state is as charming as Indiana. This isn’t a claim that Indiana’s the best Midwestern state. Ohio and Iowa are iconic in their own ways. Illinois has Chicago. Nebraska has Omaha. It’s impossible to beat Wisconsin for good, clean fun. But among the lakes and the plains, no state can match Indiana’s folksiness. It’s why they’re the best at basketball. It pays to be long and loose.
FiveThirtyEight ran a good piece ten years ago about Indiana’s history and Indiana’s identity and why Indiana’s the way that it is. The article came during the presidential primaries. It talked a lot about Abe Lincoln’s dad. The gist of it was that Indiana’s a little bit Southern. While Ohio and Michigan and the rest of the Northwest Territory states were settled from the east, Indiana was settled from the South. Scots-Irish came up across the Ohio River from Kentucky, and now we have a state where you can watch two NIT semifinals at Hinkle Fieldhouse then go eat at a Waffle House, all in the same night. In no other state can one do that. Like I said: Charming.
In a few minutes, then, I’ll leave this cathedral, home of Chitwood and Stevens and that moment last year between Trey Bonham and Terrell Owens. I’ll drive west on Interstate 70, out past the airport, to a little brick building with wraparound windows and a glowing yellow sign. I’ll order some hashbrowns, and I’ll order a waffle, and I’ll sit back in a booth and thank God for Indiana. But before I go…
It was a good night of basketball. New Mexico fans were as loud as advertised. Tulsa was as tenacious as advertised. It’s a good thing Steven Pearl brought that windbreaker, because he’s in for a special kind of Hurricane on Sunday night. The second tilt had the early markings of a classic, but despite a potent crowd crossing the border from Normal, Illinois State couldn’t keep up with Auburn’s talent and willpower in a shooter’s gym.
Sunday will be special. 25 years to the year that Tulsa took down Alabama in an NIT Championship. Auburn fans laughed at that. Auburn fans laughed at Alabama’s 2001 NIT demise. Now? Let’s just say it’s always funny until it could potentially happen to you.
As for our NIT Bracket Challenge: The scoreboard is updated. Jere2, our leader, is technically ineligible because they submitted multiple entries from the same email address (shoutout Jere1 and Jere3), so our official champion will be either PhilipFrank18 (picked Auburn) or Hauteans (picked Tulsa). We’ll also contact the official second-place and third-place finishers about prizes. Can’t promise we’ll send them (sorry, 2022 top finishers), but we’ll at least do you the dignity of leading you on and making you wonder if we ever shipped those t-shirts we said we would.
But that’s a matter for Sunday night and the weeks that follow. Tonight is about the NIT, Waffle House, Indiana, and—for those of us who follow the western Christian liturgical calendar—Jesus. Which reminds me! If you play for New Mexico or Illinois State and you’re thinking about going into the portal, maybe hold off a few days. This is not the night to do business with the guy holding the moneybag.
Good Friday was an inside job,
NIT Stu
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Thursday, April 5th, 10:43 PM EDT
Subject: Your 2026 NIT Bracket Challenge Champions
A Jewish man in his 30’s was left for dead, only to emerge on Easter Sunday with a prize that would transform his people forever.
But enough about Steven Pearl and Auburn’s shocking–comeback–after–giving–up–a–shocking–comeback.
I was asked today whether this was the first time the NIT Championship’s been played on Easter. The answer depends on your basketball theology. If you believe both Easter and the NIT to be universal and eternal, entities we recognize once a year but are called to live out in every moment of human life, then yes, the NIT Championship has always been played on Easter, and Easter has always happened in conjunction with the NIT, and the NIT and Easter have always been and always will be. You can think of the NIT as part of college basketball’s holy trinity, with the Maui Invitational and Big Monday the obvious complements in the trio.
If all of that doesn’t exactly jibe with your religion and you’re looking for a more literal answer, let’s leave it at this: The NCAA T*urnament’s sure as hell never played its championship on Easter. Imagine the fire and brimstone that would draw.
Tonight was a special one, with the lunar calendar and the basketball calendar not the only celestial bodies to align. This Auburn team was born under a special moon, the first team in history to win an NIT less than two years after (allegedly) getting in a physical altercation on their own team plane. As for Pearl? Not a lot of coaches win an NIT in their head coaching debut. He’ll join Jonas Hayes in the record books.
On the NIT Bracket Challenge side, here’s the link to the full scoreboard. As we explained last time, Jere2 was ineligible because it was one of multiple brackets submitted by the same email address. Had it been Jere1 (your gut feeling) or Jere3 (your final answer), this would feel worse, but both congratulations and apologies to Jere2. You were so close.
Instead, congratulations to PhilipFrank18, our true champion with a final score of 68 out of a possible 80. Congratulations as well to BHenne59 and B1GTime, who round out our podium.
Thank you to everyone who submitted a bracket, and especially to those of you who read all these emails. I love the NIT, and I love attention, so thank you for supporting both of my favorite things. No mortal soul knows what next year’s NIT will hold, but we’ll hope to see you there. Long live the NIT. Long live Indianapolis. Long live The Internet™.
We should respect the tenacity of geese, even if we’d never let one in our house,
NIT Stu
**
