Man. What a day. We’re getting an NIT bracket tonight, friends. The real thing! Whole 32 teams and everything. Home games, road games, fans of some upper bubble team reconciling themselves to their newest joy, fans of some lower bubble team legitimately pumped to be in the NIT, some dude emailing us telling us it’s our fault that Wichita State didn’t make the cut…what a day. Love it.
Before we dip our whole selves in the water here, the schedule for today:
- 12:00 PM EDT: Ivy League Championship, Princeton vs. Yale. ESPN2. Princeton gets an NIT auto-bid with a loss.
- 1:00 PM EDT: Atlantic 10 Championship, Davidson vs. Richmond. CBS. Richmond misses the NIT with a win.
- 5:35-ish PM EDT: End of the Big Ten Championship. Nobody cares about this game so let’s move on.
- 6:00 PM EDT: The bad tournament’s selection show. CBS. This is a stupid show and a stupid exercise in general but it does tell us who the NIT 1-seeds are, so we’ll probably watch it. Gonna boo the whole time, though. At least until the NIT 1-seed part. Will cheer wildly at that.
- 9:00 PM EDT: NIT Selection Show. ESPNU.
- 9:30 PM EDT: Mass revelry in streets across the globe as we engage in a species-wide bacchanal in celebration of our favorite tournament in the universe being just 48 hours away. Maybe some horses even get in on the party. Horses have souls, you know.
- 9:35 PM EDT: Everyone enters our NIT Bracket Challenge (link on the homepage once the field is set). Maybe some horses even get in on the party. Horses like Bracket Challenges, you know.
We’ll be releasing an updated NIT Bracketology projection both after the Ivy and A-10 games today and after the bad tournament’s selection show. Also, we’ll be in the comments on there on and off if you want to talk shop or just say, “Boy, I sure do love the NIT.”
Now.
What you want to know.
Who’s in.
Upper Bubble
Joe’s going to handle the upper bubble explainer, so go back to the home page and find that if it’s that which you seek. I will not link to something that treats villainy like the NCA* *********t with such triviality. Not today. Not on Selection Sunday. Anyway, teams on the radar up there include…
- A-10: VCU
- AAC: SMU
- ACC: Miami, Notre Dame
- Big 12: Oklahoma
- Big East: Xavier
- Big Ten: Indiana, Michigan, Rutgers
- Conference USA: North Texas
- Mountain West: Wyoming
- SEC: Texas A&M
If Davidson beats Richmond, five of those twelve will be headed our way. If Richmond beats Davidson, we get six of ‘em. For the other 26 or 27:
Locks (asterisk means auto-bid)
- A-10: Dayton, Saint Louis, St. Bonaventure
- ACC: Virginia, Wake Forest
- Ohio Valley: Belmont
- Pac-12: Colorado, Oregon
- SEC: Florida, Mississippi State, South Carolina
- WCC: BYU
- Big West: Long Beach State*
- CAA: Towson*
- Horizon: Cleveland State*
- MAAC: Iona*
- MAC: Toledo*
- Missouri Valley: Northern Iowa*
- Southland: Nicholls State*
- Sun Belt: Texas State*
- SWAC: Alcorn State*
It’s possible one of these at-large teams could get cut. It’d be really surprising, though. Really darn surprising. These folks have done enough. Also, credit to Iona, Towson, and Toledo, who’d all probably be at-large bids even if automatic bids didn’t exist.
Lower Bubble
Ok, here’s where it gets interesting. We should get six of these (five if Princeton loses). One by one, in order of where our model has them lined up:
Drake
The Bulldogs should be with us. Four Q1/Q2 wins, a solid showing against Loyola in the Missouri Valley championship (guessing that was the only time a lot of folks on the committee watched them), nothing objectionable on the résumé overall. It’s not the strongest résumé in the world (look, we’re talking about the NIT here), but it should be enough. If Drake doesn’t get in, we’ll have to ask whether the fates hate Des Moines, and if so, why? If Drake does get in, we won’t have to ask that.
Missouri State
Drake’s southern MVC neighbor, Missouri State’s the better team of the two but has the worse résumé. Lost at home to SEMO back on opening night (that’s Southeast Missouri State, and yes it defeats the purpose of the abbreviation to spell it out like this but “SEMO” is fun to say, so we always say it). Lost some other bad games. Won some good ones too, though. 2-2 against teams going to that other tournament. Makes you think.
Santa Clara
Santa Clara and these two MVC teams were right on the bubble earlier in the week, but with some automatic bids failing to materialize, they, like their Midwestern counterparts, are pretty safe. Not all the way safe, but pretty safe. Santa Clara only lost by twelve to Gonzaga on the road, and considering Gonzaga has about a thirteen-point home court advantage, one trying to hype up the NIT could make the argument that Santa Clara’s the better team. We won’t do that, because we don’t need to (you guys already know the NIT’s the better tournament), but one could do that if one so wished.
Richmond
A late entry to our little corner of the world, Richmond’s on a tear, beating an underwhelming VCU team in the A-10 quarterfinals before mounting a huge comeback against Dayton yesterday after one of Dayton’s best players got hurt. Pretty messed up to hurt Mali Smith like that, but you do you, Spiders. Keep on climbing.
The knock against Richmond is that they don’t have any Q1 wins. The other knock is that they lost to Saint Joe’s at home. By 27. 27 points. Who among us.
St. John’s
The greatest program in college basketball history, the five or six-time NIT champions (they had to vacate one because of the Abe Keita scandal that wasn’t the Abe Keita scandal, again, who among us) are close to the cut line, but should be in. Bad loss at home to Pitt, not a lot of good wins considering how many opportunities they had, etc., but their nonconference schedule doesn’t look as bad on paper as it probably was, and you know the thought of the Red Storm playing at home in the Final Four gets the committee members’ hearts racing just as much as it does yours and mine.
Vanderbilt
Right on the bubble, these Commodores. Right. On. The. Bubble.
Vanderbilt really needed to beat Alabama to get into consideration, and they did beat Alabama. That Texas A&M win a few weeks ago keeps looking better and better, too.
Louisiana Tech
We’ll shoot it straight. Louisiana Tech disappointed this year. After finishing third in last year’s NIT, Kenneth Lofton Jr. & Co. (technically, yes, he’s Kenny Lofton’s son, but I don’t know if his dad goes by Kenny) never really got going this season, despite us beginning the year by pouring all the hype their way. They came on strong in the Conference USA tournament, though, and here they are. Knocking on the door. I mean, they held North Texas to 36 points the other night. Only scored 42, sure, but that kind of makes it better, you know?
Washington State
Man, we love Washington State. Don’t think they’re gonna make it, but we love those guys. Kyle Smith is a computer dressed in a human body, and much like how it’s gone for the Oakland A’s these last two decades, he doesn’t have any great wins, but dammit, the approach makes sense. Wazzu’s in a weird boat where they might be a tournament contender if they make it, but again, they probably won’t make it. Big gap between how good this team is and how good their résumé is. Like Providence, but opposite direction.
Florida State
I think the best case for Florida State is someone in the committee room saying, “Leonard Hamilton,” and everyone smiling and thinking of sweaters and hugs and then them all looking hesitantly at each other and then one of them starting to nod a little and then the others raising their eyebrows but then someone else starting to nod a little and then someone walking up to the whiteboard and someone in the back saying, “Oh!” and then the person grabbing the eraser and then the person pausing and contemplating what they’re about to do and then someone to their right saying, “Do it,” and then the person wiping Drake’s name off the board while a man in Des Moines drops to the ground experiencing severe back spasms while thunder rolls ominously in the distance even though it’s sunny outside.
Otherwise, these guys are toast.
Grand Canyon
I think the best case for Grand Canyon is that someone in the committee room is really, really, really into LSD.
More seriously, though, Grand Canyon went undefeated in Q1 games (1-0, beat San Francisco in Phoenix in a 49-48 game too few people talk about) and they’re a vibe, so…
Maybe.
Utah State
Much like Washington State, Utah State’s pretty good! Much like Washington State, Utah State’s résumé sucks. They went 2-11 in Q1 games. As many Q1 wins as Q4 losses, which is…not actually necessarily a bad thing? I mean Missouri State has the same situation going on. Just kind of jumped out to my eyes.
UNLV
Got hot at the end, there. Just not hot enough. We think. Maybe they’ll get a weird look on the basis of the Mountain West being good and someone thinking that means the first Mountain West team out of the other tournament needs to be in the NIT. That line of thinking seems to exist in our comment section. It doesn’t make any sense when you think about it for more than fourteen seconds, but that line of thinking seems to exist in our comment section. We love you guys. Keep not thinking. Type away. Give us those engagement numbers.
UCF
Ahh, yes. Tacko Fall’s alma mater. Some of our colleagues have UCF closer than we do to the field. They might be right, but UCF’s best asset seems to be its lack of objectionable résumé content, and no one likes a loser like that.
Kansas State, West Virginia
Out by virtue of not reaching a .500 record, which isn’t a requirement but might be a requirement.
Oklahoma State
Out by virtue of the NCAA deciding it needed to punish somebody for once and Oklahoma State not having enough power to do what UNC did and just fully get away with it.
Temple, Hofstra, Furman, Wichita State, Clemson, Fresno State, Kent State, Middle Tennessee State
We’re getting to real deep cuts now. We always do this. We always say, “Where should we draw the line where we stop talking about potential NIT teams on Selection Sunday?” and then we always get anxious about a scenario in which we don’t mention a team and the NIT takes that team and we look foolish to dozens of people we don’t know and don’t care about that much.
***
Alright, that’s it on the NIT front. Good luck out there to all seeking admittance, and to those contemplating committing crimes to try to help their cause, we condemn the violent ones and strongly discourage the non-violent ones unless they’re funny. If you think slashing Rob Manfred’s tires will help Vanderbilt make the field, slash those freaking tires.
