NIT Bracketology, March 10

There's less than a week until Selection Sunday and the NIT bracket is heating up! Things are also getting sort of wild. Leagues like the SEC and Big East are looking at sending so many teams to the NCAA Tournament that there are not many teams left to play in other postseason events. This actually has the result of freeing up some space in the NIT, which is nice if you're trying to construct a reasonable bracket.

The biggest assumption I made for the bracket is that South Carolina would decline a bid to the NIT. All but three teams in the SEC appear to be headed to the NCAA Tournament (I guess it really is the strongest conference ever). That leaves Texas, LSU and South Carolina on the outside looking in for a conference that gets three exempt bids to the NIT. Would South Carolina really want one of them at 12-19 overall? (I think it's a stretch for LSU to get one at 14-17.) I have the Gamecocks declining, which opens up an at-large spot for a non-exempt team to host (in this case Colorado St.).

Though they're now harder to earn, we already also have one presumed automatic bid for the NIT: Chattanooga. I would expect that a few more teams find their way into the bracket that way as well. Unfortunately, South Alabama's resume isn't quite good enough for them to get an automatic invite (their metrics average looks to be ~136). I could see them getting an invite as a nice gesture from the committee though if a number of teams declined.

Last 6 NCAA Teams (In Order): West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arkansas, San Diego St., Indiana, North Carolina

NIT Bracket:

1. Colorada St.

Santa Clara

4. Georgetown (Big East)

Rutgers

3. LSU (SEC 2)

Chattanooga

2. Wake Forest (ACC 2)

Saint Joseph's

1. Texas (SEC 1)

St. Bonaventure

4. Bradley (MVC)

Iowa

3. North Texas (American)

Florida St.

2. Nebraska (Big Ten)

TCU

1. Boise St. (Mountain West)

Grand Canyon

4. Middle Tennessee (CUSA)

UCF

3. San Francisco (WCC)

Stanford

2. UC Irvine (Big West)

UNLV

1. SMU (ACC 1)

UNC Wilmington

4. Dayton (A10)

Penn St.

3. Kansas St.

Oregon St.

2. Pittsburgh

George Mason

College Basketball Crown:

Ohio St.

Northwestern

Cincinnati

Utah

Villanova

Butler

Also considered: Loyola IL, Georgia Tech, Saint Louis, Troy, CSUN, Northern Iowa, UAB, Stamford, George Washington, Florida Atlantic, North Alabama, South Alabama, Nevada

NIT Bracketology, March 1

You would've been forgiven if you were thinking, "Is John ever going to update his NIT bracketology this season?"

Life has been extremely busy generally, and it has left me with less time to watch college basketball that I would've liked. This has meant that while I've watched the occasional moments of Princeton and Northwestern's disappointing seasons, there hasn't been nearly as much time to watch other teams.

There also has not been a lot of time to do research on what the impact of the College Basketball Crown will be on the NIT. Thus I'm forced to make some educated guesses in creating this bracket.

Those guesses include:

1. The top teams from the CBC affiliated leagues (Big Ten, Big 12, and Big East) will play in that tournament. The reason I think this is the case is because FOX bracketologists have started indicating potential College Basketball Crown teams and it looks like it's always the top two teams that miss from any league.
2. I assume any at-large team and any team from any other conference will prefer to play in the NIT. This is pretty straightforward and based most on educated conjecture from talking to sources prior to the start of the season.
3. The NIT will call every team in a league to take the automatic bids. That is why you see teams like Georgetown, Penn St. and Utah in this bracket as automatic bids. It's not that I think those are the best non-NCAA Tournament teams. It's that those are the teams I think might accept an NIT invitation.

If you know more about this situation feel free to reach out to me via email at nycbuckets[at]gmail[dot]com or on Blue Sky. It would be great to have some additional context.

With all of that said, here is how I think the bracket will shape up in two weeks based on where things currently stand. All of the data used here was through Feb. 28, 2025.

Last NCAA Tournament Teams (In Order):

West Virginia

Vanderbilt

Georgia

North Carolina

Nebraska

Arkansas

Wake Forest

Ohio St.

In The College Basketball Crown:

Northwestern (B1G)

Indiana (B1G)

Cincinnati (B12)

Arizona St. (B12)

Villanova (BE)

Xavier (BE)

Iowa (B1G)

TCU (Big 12)

UCF (Big 12)

Rutgers (B1G)

UNLV (MWC) -- Just a vibes guess.

Project NIT Bracket (Autos for Top 16, Bubbles in Italics):

1. Texas (SEC)

Arkansas St.

4. Middle Tennessee (CUSA)

Colorado St.

3. North Texas (American)

Kansas St.

2. Pittsburgh (ACC)

Dayton

1. Boise St. (MWC)

Oregon St.

4. Penn St.

St. Bonaventure

3. Bradley (MVC)

Saint Joseph's

2. UC Irvine (BW)

San Francisco

1. Santa Clara (WCC)

Grand Canyon

4. Stanford (ACC)

Nevada

3. LSU (SEC)

Florida St.

2. Utah (B12)

USC

1. SMU (ACC)

Samford

4. Georgeotnw (BE)

Virginia

3. George Mason (A10)

UNC Wilmington

2. Oklahoma (SEC)

Northern Iowa

I feel really iffy on Florida St. being in this bracket. The Seminoles declined to play last season (I have the emails showing the discussion) and I'm not sure what's different about this season. Both them and Virginia seem like the least safe bets amongst the non-College Basketball Crown power conference teams.

I'll be trying to post some more regular bracket updates this month, because it is March!

NIT Bracketology, Dec. 2

The season has started! We're not even a month in, but a lot has changed. This is my updated projection. The biggest note is that I think the College Basketball Crown is going to have enough decent teams to fill their bracket, so it's possible some of the conferences involved might still send teams to the NIT. (We'll see.) In this projection that happens with Northwestern and TCU taking the Big Ten and Big 12 automatic bids respectively.

Also, we really need conference play to start so that the ACC, SEC, and Atlantic 10 in particular can start getting sorted out. It was like putting Jenga blocks together at the end of this bracket. (We could really use some additional West Coast teams stepping up as well.)

The only non-protected team in a top 4 seed in the bracket therefore is Boise St. (because the Big East doesn't have a team). While I have the Broncos projected behind San Diego St. in the conference standings, they were by far the highest in the at-large pecking order.

NIT Bracket

1. San Diego St. (MWC)

U. Oregon St. (WCC)

4. UC San Diego (BW)

U. St. Bonaventure (A10)

3. San Francisco (WCC)

U. Colorado St. (MWC)

2. SMU (ACC)

U. Saint Joseph's

1. Northwestern (B1G)

U. Loyola Chicago (A10)

4. Bradley (MVC)

U. Wichita St. (AAC)

3. Missouri (SEC)

U. Washington St. (WCC)

2. Florida St. (ACC)

U. George Mason (A10)

1. Oklahoma (SEC)

U. Rhode Island (A10)

4. Louisiana Tech (CUSA)

U. Wake Forest (ACC)

3. VCU (A10)

U. Vanderbilt (SEC)

2. NC State (ACC)

U. Florida Atlantic (AAC)

1. Boise St. (MWC)

U. Santa Clara (WCC)

4. TCU (B12)

U. Notre Dame (ACC)

3. North Texas (AAC)

U. UNLV (MWC)

2. LSU (SEC)

U. Murray St. (MVC)

College Basketball Crown

Butler (BE), Villanova (BE), Xavier (BE), Nebraska (B1G), Iowa (B1G), Rutgers (B1G), West Virginia (B12), Arizona St. (B12), Utah (B12), Washington (B1G), Georgetown (BE), Providence (BE), DePaul (BE), Kansas St. (B12), UCF (B12), Colorado (B12)

A New Preseason NIT Projection

I put out an offseason NIT bracket projection earlier this offseason, but that was before the news that the NCAA was changing the NIT selection process for 2024-25. Given those changes it only makes sense to re-release my preseason NIT bracket projections!

This projection still includes sending all of the Big East, Big 12 and Big Ten teams that appear to be in good shape for the postseason to the College Basketball Crown. This is despite the fact that those conferences will clearly be in Ken Pomeroy's top 12 and earn one of the preferred seeds in the NIT. (I wish I could be a fly on the wall when an Athletic Director has to explain to Chris Collins that they're giving up a home game to fly to Las Vegas for a tournament in a few weeks instead.)

I used KenPom's current conference rankings to determine the automatic bids. The at-large teams were determined by the preseason composite ratings I had calculated earlier that mash up KenPom, T-Rank and Evan Miya. While this doesn't match the NIT process exactly, it's a good approximation in the offseason.

The results are below. The only manual adjustment I made really was excluding Virginia from the bracket entirely. The Cavaliers have been rocked by the sudden retirement of Tony Bennett and it's unclear if UVA will actually be able to live up to its mediocre preseason expectations.

The other big change? Home games for Seattle (!), UAB, Louisiana Tech, San Francisco, and Bradley – These all come through being the projected second best team in a top 12 KenPom conference. (There are no automatic bids for projected conference champs with 125 rating or higher because I don't project top seeds losing in a conference tournament until it happens.)

Technically every 5-8 seed is unseeded and I could bump them around to get better regional matchups and such, but I want to give readers some sense of where a team stands in the pecking order prior to the season starting. (I might change the format of these posts in the future to help explain this fact.)

Projected NIT Bracket:

1. Oklahoma (SEC 1)

8. Loyola Chicago

4. Boise St. (MWC 1)

5. Notre Dame

3. LSU

6. North Texas

2. SMU

7. Utah St.

1. Georgia (SEC 2)

8. Syracuse

4. San Francisco (WCC 1)

5. San Diego St.

3. Dayton (A10 1)

6. UNLV

2. Louisville (ACC 3)

7. Western Kentucky

1. Miami FL (ACC 1)

8. Vanderbilt

4. Seattle (WAC 1)

5. Nevada

3. UAB (AAC 1)

6. Virginia Tech

2. Missouri (SEC 3)

7. George Mason

1. N.C. State (ACC 2)

8. Saint Joseph's

4. Bradley (MVC 1)

5. Colorado St.

3. Louisiana Tech (CUSA 1)

6. Georgia Tech

2. South Carolina

7. Washington St.

Other Teams With Automatic Bids (But College Basketball Crown): Northwestern (Big Ten 1), Providence (Big East 1), TCU (Big 12 1)

Other Possibilities: Wichita St., Florida St., Santa Clara, Stanford, South Florida, Massachusetts, Yale, Florida Atlantic, Sam Houston St.

The NIT Selection Criteria Is Changing Again (For The Better!)

The NCAA is changing the NIT Selection criteria again, but this time it's for the better!

The changes announced today include 16 "exempt" teams. Those teams are:

1. The top two teams from the SEC not selected for the NCAA Tournament
2. The top two teams from the ACC not selected for the NCAA Tournament
3. The top team not selected from the NCAA championship from the top 12 conferences (based on the Ken Pomeroy Rating) — and yes, the SEC and ACC do get to double dip here

The "top" team doesn't mean "top" in the standings though, which could have some interesting consequences. "The top teams from each conference will be determined based on the average of the teams’ ESPN Basketball Power Index (BPI), Kevin Pauga Index (KPI), NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET), Ken Pomeroy Rating (KenPom), Strength of Record (SOR), Torvik ranking and Wins Above Bubble (WAB) ranking. All rankings are already included in the “Team Sheets” used by the NIT Committee during the selection process."

The bonus for these 16 teams is that by being "exempt" they're guaranteed to host a first-round game.

The NCAA also announced that any "regular-season conference champions that are not otherwise selected to the NCAA championship can earn an automatic bid to the NIT as along as that regular-season champion has an average of 125 or better across BPI, KPI, NET, KenPom, SOR, Torvik and WAB rankings".

This will definitely shake up the field moving forward and appears to be a direct response to the College Basketball Crown.

I used Torvik WAB from last season to fill in for WAB, and if this system was in place last season I believe these would've been the "exempt" teams:

• Pittsburgh (ACC)
• Wake Forest (ACC)
• LSU (SEC)
• Ole Miss (SEC)
• Oklahoma (Big 12)
• St. John's (Big East)
• Ohio St. (Big Ten)
• Georgia (SEC)
• Virginia Tech (ACC)
• Utah (Pac-12)
• UNLV (Mountain West)
• Richmond (Atlantic 10)
• Memphis (AAC)
• Indiana St. (Missouri Valley)
• San Francisco (WCC)
• Western Carolina (Southern Conference)

These teams would also qualify under the regular-season champion exception:

• South Florida
• Princeton
• UC Irvine
• Appalachian St.
• High Point

Toledo would have just missed at 129. Quinnipiac would've been a bit further off at 149.

Why is Memphis the automatic qualifier from the AAC over South Florida? A four point difference in their average rating, which mostly comes down to how KenPom viewed the two programs last season.

Iowa, Seton Hall, Bradley and VCU would've made excellent at-large teams based on their rankings in all of these metrics.

In addition, the race for the "exempt" bid in conferences like the Atlantic 10, Big Ten (sorta), and AAC would have been fascinating to watch down the stretch. Most seasons the Mountain West, Missouri Valley and WCC could also fall into that group. It will give teams a lot of incentives.

If this system was in place for Selection Sunday 2024 it would've given UNLV, Richmond and San Francisco home games that they didn't have last season. In addition, Western Carolina, which missed the bracket entirely, would've been given a home game. Memphis would've also been invited as an exempt team, but they were on record as planning to decline an NIT invite.

In addition to Western Carolina, High Point would also have been invited to the NIT last season.

This would have unfortunately most likely taken a home game away from Princeton, unless the number of exempt teams declining allowed the Tigers to host at Jadwin. (This is essentially what happened last season anyways.)

Overall, these changes look like they could represent a positive step forward for the NIT. It will create better representation across college basketball and lead to some interesting teams receiving invites. The College Basketball Crown still hangs over this operation, with the likelihood that the best teams from the Big East, Big Ten and Big 12 will head to Vegas, but the NIT should have a very competitive field.

Preseason NIT Bracketology

The 2024-25 college basketball season is coming up fast! KenPom, T-Rank and EvanMiya have all released rankings of all 364 teams competing in Division I this season. I used those to put together this projected NIT bracket.

A few initial thoughts:

1. No one has any idea what to do with the College Basketball Crown. The new tournament is supposed to kick off in the spring of 2025. The original release said that it would include teams from the Big Ten, Big East and Big 12 "along with additional at-large participants". I have no idea how to interpret that statement. Given that the SEC and ACC decided to stick with the NIT for now I think we can safely assume that top teams from those leagues aren't going to play in an upstart new tournament. This projection only includes teams from those three leagues in my CBC tournament.
2. The ratings aren't in sync on a number of high profile teams. Rutgers is one of the teams I am projecting to the CBC for now. The Scarlet Knights have high-profile 5-star recruits and a team ranked in the initial AP Top 25. KenPom and EvanMiya aren't buying it though. Those two systems rate Steve Pikiell's team 63rd and 72nd respectively. T-Rank is much higher at 19th. Splitting the difference still leaves Rutgers as a bubble team for the NCAA Tournament. We've seen teams with that type of talent miss the NCAA Tournament entirely, so I don't think this is that controversial of a projection. Other teams that are in a similar boat near the bubble are Miami FL and Dayton.
3. The lack of Big Ten, Big East and Big 12 teams might create bracketing issues for the NIT. If teams from those leagues do opt out of the NIT, there will definitely be some issues bracketing the tournament. The reason is because it will likely result in a flood of ACC teams. Here I had to break procedure because I ended up with too many ACC teams for them to fit nicely into brackets. That could be a big challenge down the line.
4. I am assuming that automatic NIT bids still exist for the ACC and SEC. This doesn't really matter once you remove the other power conferences, but I'm assuming that those schools will still be guaranteed home games. The dissolution of the PAC-12 (at least for this season) means that this would only really affect four teams anyways. (The "auto bids" are on the 1 and 2 seed lines in this projection.)

Projected NIT Bracket:

1. Miami FL

8. Loyola Chicago

4. Utah St.

5. San Francisco

3. San Diego St.

6. Notre Dame

2. South Carolina

7. Syracuse

1. Dayton

8. Wichita St.

4. Vanderbilt

5. UAB

3. SMU

6. Colorado St.

2. LSU

7. Georgia Tech

1. Oklahoma

8. Saint Louis

4. Virginia

5. George Mason

3. Boise St.

6. Washington St.

2. Missouri

7. Bradley

1. Georgia

8. Virginia Tech

4. Nevada

5. Saint Joseph's

3. Louisville

6. North Texas

2. NC State

7. UNLV

College Basketball Crown:

1. Northwestern

2. Rutgers

3. USC

4. Nebraska

5. TCU

6. Providence

7. Penn St.

8. UCF

9. Minnesota

10. Utah

11. Washington

12. Arizona St.

13. Butler

14. West Virginia

15. Seton Hall

16. Georgetown

Other Possibilities: Florida St., Santa Clara, Stanford, South Florida, Massachusetts, Louisiana Tech, Yale, Florida Atlantic, Western Kentucky, Sam Houston St.

If you count, you'll see that the CBC bracket includes seven teams from the Big Ten, five from the Big 12 and four from the Big East. That seems about the right breakdown given how many Big 12 teams are likely to make the NCAA Tournament. Four of the CBC participants are projected to be under .500 if you look at projected regular season records on T-Rank right now (Arizona St., WVU, Seton Hall and Georgetown).

Is this really what's going to happen? Your guess is as good as mine right now. I'll be keeping an ear out for any news I hear about the college basketball's rapidly shifting postseason as we try and venture into this new world.

WAB Is Going To Be On NCAA Team Sheets!

The NCAA Team Sheets are going to have Wins Above Bubble! That was one of the excellent pieces of news that came out of the meetings of the NCAA's Men's Basketball Committee the past few days. Today it was announced that T-Rank (from Bart Torvik's excellent site) and Wins Above Bubble (apparently the NCAA's NET-based version) are going to be added to the NCAA Team Sheets, which will make them much more accessible for the NCAA's Selection Committee.

This is a big deal because Wins Above Bubble (WAB) often paints a different picture for teams that play a non-traditional power conference schedule (see mid-majors). It's especially valuable because it's so difficult for elite mid-majors to get certain types of games (home games against power conference teams for instance). Don't believe me? Here are the top teams to miss the NCAA Tournament according to T-Rank WAB the past five seasons (well minus 2020 because there was no tournament):

• 2024: Indiana St. (28th), Princeton (42nd), Seton Hall (43rd)
• 2023: Oklahoma St. (51st), Sam Houston St. (52nd), Santa Clara (53rd)
• 2022: SMU (38th), Wake Forest (44th), Texas A&M (47th)
• 2021: Arizona (37th), Louisville (39th), SMU (50th)
• 2019: UNC Greensboro (35th), North Carolina St. (37th), TCU (42nd)

Last season's Indiana St. team is the prime example of the types of teams a WAB metric can benefit. The Sycamores were 28-6 when they lost to Drake in the Missouri Valley Conference tournament final. Three of those losses were to Alabama, Michigan St. and Drake on the road — games most bubble teams would be expected to lose. WAB properly contextualizes those losses and also just how difficult it is to go 10-0 in Q3 games, which is what ISU did while playing its MVC regular season schedule.

UNC Greensboro in 2019 is another perfect example. The Spartans under Wes Miller were 28-6 on Selection Sunday and eventually ended up with an NIT No. 1 seed despite being ranked 100th in T-Rank and 87th in KenPom. Why? Because none of those six losses came against a team ranked lower than 62nd (Furman) on T-Rank that season. While a 2-6 record against Quad 1 doesn't look that impressive it matters than five of those games were against Quad 1-A and that they went 24-0 against Q2 and above. Wins Above Bubble is able to normalize those types of resumes.

Hopefully this will lead to a bigger tent in at-large selection conversations. Teams that might not have the "traditional" resume can at least get a shot. (Note: For much of last season this would've included a team like Syracuse.) It will also help better sort out resumes as conferences continue to balloon and the traditional home-and-homes disappear from conference play. (Look how many ACC teams appear on that list above.)

It's not just mid-majors that will benefit from this change, but it's a good step towards equity.