NIT Central

Last update: Wedn 3/14/07

You can watch NIT games on the ESPN family of networks, but you can also watch some NIT games online via XOS Live Streaming! (I do not know if it is free to watch them online). Details and schedule at the official NIT page


NIT at-large field projections at:

NITology.com

The Bracket Project

The Backboard

NIT Selection show to air on ESPN2 this year!
Great job by the NCAA since taking over the NIT!. They are making it more like a smaller-scale NCAA tourney by cutting down the teams to 32 (instead of the unbalanced number of 40), and now they will be having a selection show broadcast on ESPN2, on Selection Sunday, 2 hours after the NCAA brackets are announced. The "NIT Selection Show" will air on ESPN2 at 6pm pacific/9pm eastern, on Selection Sunday, Sunday March 11, 2007. Check my March Madness TV listings for comprehensive tv coverage of both championship week and march madness (NCAA and NIT tourneys).

The 32 NIT bids will be awarded as follows:

To all the regular season conference champions who do not earn an automatic NCAA bid or at-large NCAA bid. Each conference's tie-breaker system will be used to determine who gets the automatic NIT bid.

The remaining spots will be filled by the best available teams using similar principles as those used by the NCAA tourney selection cmte and by trying to minimize travel for teams.

NIT Automatic Bid Projections: EIGHT (8)

Austin Peay (Ohio Valley)

East Tennessee State (Atlantic Sun)

Marist (MAAC)

South Alabama (Sun Belt)

Toledo (MAC)

Vermont (America East)

Delaware State (MEAC)

Miss Valley State (SWAC)

Realistically two conference tournaments remain that could result in an NIT at-large bid. One more if BYU loses and they are not given an NCAA at-large bid. So the size of the NIT at-large pool is much more predictable right now...

At this point a number of regular season conference championships have been decided, and the conference tourneys are around the corner. So the regular season champions who are not considered for an NCAA at-large bid, they have an "NIT safety net" in case they fail to win the automatic NCAA bid by winning their conference tourney and they don't get an NCAA at-large bid.

These are the NIT "Safety-Net" teams:

Big West: Long Beach State

Independents: They do not qualify for an NIT automatic bid. Utah Valley State has the best record among them

Ivy League: Their regular season champion gets the conference's NCAA bid, so judging from the language in the NIT selection regulations (see link below), they can't get an automatic NIT bid (they can still get NIT at-large bids if their teams are deemed to deserve them)

Mountain West: BYU

Southland: Texas A&M CC


The remaining conferences do not get an automatic NIT bid because their regular season champions are projected to be safe NCAA at-large teams:

The six "BCS" regular season conference champions (whoever they maybe)

C-USA: Memphis

Missouri Valley: Southern Illinois

WAC: Nevada

Conference standings at Yahoo! Sports

So the maximum of NIT automatic bids to be given are 21, and the minimum is zero. Thus the NIT at-large bids will be from 11 to 32. The "bcs" teams who usually take the NIT for granted will have to earn it this time around, and they have to root for the regular season mid-major conference champions to get their conference NCAA at-large bid so they don't eat up an NIT automatic bid.

With this in mind, take a look at
NITology.com that has a breakdown of the NIT at-large field.

The official NIT website has details and dates of the NIT tourney games. These are the official NIT Selection Procedures

To refresh your memory, these are the results and TV coverage of the 2006 post-season NIT tourney