So, I mentioned a little about this when I gave some praise to Auburn for accepting their bid to the NIT tournament. I totally get that it had to be frustrating to get invited to the NCAA championships, but they decided to keep playing. And they were rewarded by making it to the NIT semi-finals in Indianapolis. Right now, they have a 7 point lead over Illinois State, while Tulsa won their 30th game of the season by beating New Mexico by 5 points.
The NCAA really screwed up in my opinion. They changed the rules to give more bids to the power conferences – and then only 4 teams from the power conferences showed up. But then they screwed up more. And here is why.
One of the best parts to me about the NIT was if you won your conference’s regular season title, you were guaranteed at least a spot in the NIT. Well – not any more. They changed that rule so that they could give the power conferences more spots. And then when those teams declined the bids, the NCAA decided to simply get the best teams according to their NET rankings.
Meanwhile, the Crown wanted power conference teams, so they invited Minnesota (15-17), Rutgers (14-19) and Creighton (15-17). Ironically, one of those teams will win a post-season game since Rutgers is playing Creighton later tonight.
So, three teams that didn’t even win half their games got a chance to play in the pre-season. So, excluding Belmont – who declined their NIT bid because they had already lost their head coach, these following teams won a share of their regular season championship and did not even get invited to play.
- Central Arkansas (22-12) – Atlantic Sun co-champ
- Austin Peay (22-9) – Atlantic Sun co-champ
- Portland State (20-11) – Big Sky champ
- Merrimack (23-11) – MAAC champ
- Morehead State (20-13) – OVC co-champ
- Bethune-Cookman (17-15) – SWAC champ
The NCAA should fix this and make sure all the regular season champs at least get an invitation to play in the NIT.
I also feel like the teams should need to play if they are invited. I could give more grace to teams when none of the players made any money but their scholarships. But apparently, according to a Sports Illustrated article, it was estimated that between NIL and the revenue-sharing commitments, Indiana spent over $10 million on their basketball team.
If the NCAA has contracts with ESPN and FOX to televise the games for the NIT and Crown tournaments, then I feel if a team is paying their players a combined $10 million dollars, then those players need to play wherever the NCAA sends them. If Indiana gets invited to play in the NIT (and would then get to play all their games in the state of Indiana since they would certainly be given home games until the semi-finals, and the semi-finals are in Indianapolis), then they should have to honor the NCAA’s contracts and play.
Fans of those team would likely still watch. So, they should play. The university is paying $10 million for the team to play – so lets play.
Anyways, it looks like Auburn is going to run away with their game (they have extended their lead over Illinois State to 13 – although we have seen larger comebacks this March) and will play Tulsa for the NIT championship. And I am not even paying attention to the Crown – it is hard for me to care about who wins between two power conference teams that couldn’t win half of their games this season.
The postseason should be a reward where the best remaining teams get invited. If the power conference teams don’t want to play, lets at least invite the regular season champions who didn’t win their conference tournaments.