NIT-Picking Tournament

Belmont & Others Short Changed

(St. Louis, MO) – Why wasn’t Belmont a part of the National Invitation Tournament? In one of the true travesties of sports justice, the 26-4 Bruins, winners of the Ohio Valley Conference regular season title were not invited to this year’s ‘NIT-Picking Tournament’.

Belmont and seven other conference champions were not selected for the tournament that states one of the reasons for its existence is to enable conference champions that fail to win their leagues’ postseason tournaments to play postseason basketball.

NIT-Picking the Tournament

The NIT was limited to 16 teams this season. Down from the normal 32 teams due to covid concerns. So, the selection process was more rigorous than in past seasons. In 2017 the NCAA revamped the selection process on two main fronts.

According to Wikipedia the NCAA announced a revamped selection process starting with the 2017 tournament. The main highlights are:

• Teams are no longer required to have .500 or greater records to receive bids.
• Similar to the automatic bids the NCAA Tournament grants for all conference tournament champions, all teams that won regular-season conference championships but failed to earn NCAA tournament bids are guaranteed places in the NIT.

However, this year’s NIT field consisted of exactly three teams that could be considered conference champions. Western Kentucky and Louisiana Tech who each won a divisional title in Conference USA are two of the three.

Eight conference champions, including Belmont were left out. Four Atlantic Ten teams were invited. Three teams which finished ninth in their respected conferences were selected and no team that even finished second in its league, can be found in this bracket.

Many will argue that Belmont should have made the NCAA Tournament. That is not my beef, their metrics, despite their great regular season record (26-4) didn’t measure up.

But how does a tournament that describes part of its criteria as “all teams that won regular-season conference championships but failed to earn NCAA tournament bids are guaranteed places in the NIT” eliminate EIGHT CONFERENCE CHAMPIONS?

The Other Jilted Lovers

In alphabetic order the other jilted champions were Big Sky Conference champ Southern Utah (20-4, 12-2); Neither James Madison, nor Northeastern (both 8-2 in the Colonial) were invited. The Metro Atlantic’s Siena Saints (12-5, 12-4) were left on the sidelines. Wagner (13-7, 13-5) of the Northeast Conference got the snub. While Abilene Christian went to the NCAA Tournament from the Southland Conference, regular season champion Nicholls (18-7, 14-2) couldn’t walk through the NIT-Picking Tournament doors.  The Southwestern Athletic Conference had two undefeated teams (during league play) to choose from, but neither Prairie View A&M (16-5, 13-0) nor Jackson State (12-6, 11-0) were deemed good enough. Either South Dakota (14-11, 11-4) or South Dakota State (16-7, 9-3) could have been chosen from the Summit Conference but weren’t.

Where there were ties, or divisional set ups that would have allowed for more teams from leagues like these, we ignored them. If any kind of regular season title was earned we didn’t consider it a snub.

Did They Opt Out?

Admittedly, we don’t know if some of these teams opted out of the ‘NIT Picking Tournament’. The NCAA said some teams ‘may have’. “Due to the unique circumstances of the 2020-21 season, institutions were asked to confirm, in advance, their intentions to play in the NIT if selected. As a result, some teams that may have otherwise been selected to the NIT chose not to participate in 2020-21

We know Belmont did not.

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— Belmont Basketball (@BelmontMBB) March 15, 2021

 

While the NIT Selection Committee has the right to do whatever they want, please don’t tell us that you have criteria and then not follow it. We heard all season that the NET and KenPom metrics would weigh in on the March Madness selections and they did.

Belmont’s metrics weren’t good enough for the NCAA Tournament. Winning their conference’s regular season title made them an ‘NIT lock’. Ye they didn’t get in. Of the eight conference champions not selected for the ‘NIT Picking Tournament’ the Bruins had the best record.

Belmont’s offensive fire-power would be pleasing for viewers! The Bruins are fourteenth in scoring offense, fourth in assists per game (18.2), seventh in assist/turnover ratio (1.52) and attempted triples. The NIT selection committee frankly missed it.

Clearly they were more deserving than ninth place teams Mississippi State (SEC), North Carolina State (ACC) and Richmond (A-10). Belmont’s NET was not as good as teams that DID make the tournament, but that isn’t the criteria.

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