Of course, yesterday was all about the NCAA Tournament and which 68 teams would get the chance to compete for a National Championship.
However, there are 283 other Division I college basketball teams, and some of them are worthy of playing in some kind of postseason tournament. Enter the “other” three postseason tournaments: the NIT, the CBI and the CIT.
The NIT, which has been around since 1938, accepted 32 teams, including several that were arguably snubs for the NCAA Tournament, including SMU, St. John’s and Minnesota. Here are the four brackets:
SMU Bracket: SMU, California, Arkansas, San Francisco, LSU, Indiana State, Utah Valley, UC Irvine
Florida State Bracket: Florida State, Georgia, Louisiana Tech, Georgetown, West Virginia, Iona, Vermont, Florida Gulf Coast
St. John’s Bracket: St. John’s, Illinois, Clemson, Green Bay, Belmont, Georgia State, Boston University, Robert Morris
Minnesota Bracket: Minnesota, Missouri, Southern Miss, Saint Mary’s, Utah, Toledo, Davidson, High Point
Games begin tomorrow, and the tournament’s final four—which will be held at Madison Square Garden—begins on April 1. The championship game will take place on April 3.
College basketball’s other two postseason tournaments—the College Basketball Invitational and the Collegeinsider.com Postseason Tournament—also announced their fields.
The CBI is headlined by three major conference schools: Oregon State, Penn State and Texas A&M. The rest of the tournament are made up by these 13 mid-to-low major schools: Fresno State, Hampton, Illinois State, Morehead State, Old Dominion, Princeton, Radford, Siena, South Dakota State, Stony Brook, Tulane, UTEP and Wyoming. This tournament begins tomorrow, and the championship game is a best-of-three series that begins on March 31.
The CIT, which began in 2009, is made up of the following 32 mid-to-low major teams, beginning tonight, when Holy Cross travels to Brown to take on the Bears. The rest of the 32 team field, which will play its first round games on Tuesday and Wednesday, can be found here. The championship game will also be held on April 3.
