I admit that I don’t pay a ton of attention to the NIT – typically teams either show up excited to either prove they should have been in the dance or excited to just get a chance to keep playing. Or they crash and burn after the heartache of being left out of the dance.

But the two teams in the NIT were interesting finalists who put on a great show. In one corner, you had Texas A&M who had that amazing run in the SEC Tournament to only lose in the championship game to Tennessee – going into the championship, they had won 12 of their last 14 games. They went from completely out of the picture to one game away from making the tournament and definitely in the bubble conversation.

In the other corner, you had Xavier who looked like a lock for the tournament, and then lost 8 of their last 10 regular season games to fall onto the wrong side of the bubble conversation. And then, impressively won their 4 NIT matches to get to the final.

Texas A&M jumped out to an 8 point lead at halftime, but Xavier came back. The game at the end was an awesome back and forth of Texas A&M getting the lead and Xavier taking it back. With 27 seconds left, Quenton Jackson drove to the lane for the Aggies and was fouled. Jackson calmly hit both free throws to take the lead by 1.

Xavier’s Adam Kunkel missed a contested layup but Zack Freemantle got the rebound. Freemantle tried to go back up with the ball, but his shot was met with a thunderous block by A&M’s Ethan Henderson. But that still gave Xavier one more shot.

The ball comes in to Jack Nunge, who made an aggressive move from the post into the lane and hooked the ball with his right hand over the A&M defender off the backboard and into the basket for a 1 point lead with 3 seconds left.

Tyrese Radford charged down the court hoping to have one last chance to win the game. He dribbled as close as he could before time ran out, put up a runner as the buzzer goes off, the ball hits the rim, rattles around as if it is going to win the game, and then at the last moment, kicks off and drops harmlessly to the ground.

It was a great game – congratulations to Xavier on winning the NIT!!!! Hopefully, the Final Four will bring just as exciting of a finish to the 2022 season!