The NIT might be a difficult tournament to get into this year.  That is because the automatic bids to regular season champions that don’t win their conference tournament or an NCAA at-large bid get an automatic birth into the NIT.

And sadly for the regular season champions, they are falling like flies.   Here is the list of top seeds that lost so far.

• America East – Vermont
• Atlantic 10 – St. Louis (will still get an NCAA bid)
• Atlantic Sun – Florida Gulf Coast (although at least they lost to their co-champ Mercer)
• Big 12 – Kansas (will still get an NCAA bid)
• Big East – Villanova (will still get an NCAA bid)
• Big South – High Point
• Horizon – Green Bay
• MAAC – Iona
• NEC – Robert Morris
• OVC – Belmont
• Patriot – Boston University
• Southern – Davidson
• SWAC – Southern (although they apparently are not eligible due to academic reasons)

And there is still lots of games still to be played.  14 top seeds are still playing in their tournaments.

Right now, that means only Delaware (Colonial), Wichita State (MVC), North Dakota State (Summit) and Gonzaga (WCC) have so far managed to win their conference tournaments (guess we could throw Atlantic Sun co-champ Mercer into the mix).

Normally, the top seeds of the small conferences do better than this.  But this year, with all these teams that dominated their conferences in the regular season are losing their bids and falling into the at-large pool, it does make you start to wonder if the Ivy league has the right idea to give their invitation to the dance to their regular season champion…

I know it will never happen – it is all about money.  But it hurts to see all these teams work so hard to win their conference only to have those dreams dashed in a 3-4 day tournament.