Other Post-Season Tournaments: NIT Edition

There are, of course, other tournaments outside of the NCAA Tournament. The biggest and best of these is the NIT, the National Invitation Tournament. The NIT started in 1938 and is run by the NCAA who purchased the tournament in 2005. In it's earlier years, the NIT rivaled the NCAA Tournament as the most prestigious post-season college basketball event. The games were held at Madison Square Garden, where the finals are still held today. Now, the NIT is more of a consolation prize for teams who don't make the NCAA Tournament. Teams who win their regular season conference championship are guaranteed bids to the NIT, and the first four teams who miss out on NCAA Tournament bids are given the number one seeds. With that history lesson behind us, let's take a look at this year's tournament, which is chalk full of mid-majors.

First round games have already taken place in the NIT with the most notable upset coming from South Dakota St. who took down number one seeded Colorado St. The Jackrabbits lost their second round game to Vanderbilt, though, who is now in the quarterfinals. They will play Stanford who knocked off Rhode Island for a chance to get to Madison Square Garden.

One seed Old Dominion out of C-USA will play Illinois St. who upset Wichita St. in the Missouri Valley Tournament. The winner of that game will play the winner of Murray St. and Tulsa. The Racers had one of the nation's longest winning streaks snapped when they lost to Belmont in the Ohio Valley Tournament. Tulsa was a bubble team for the NCAA Tournament who came up just short. It should be a good game between these two teams.

On the other side Richmond, as a one seed, beat Arizona St. and will play Miami who beat Alabama to make it to the quarterfinals. The Spiders have played well of late and beat their cross-town rivals from VCU twice this season. Arizona St. is coming off a win over the defending national champions from UConn.

Finally, one seed Temple handled George Washington for the right to play the winner of C-USA regular season champions Louisiana Tech and Texas A&M. Temple was the first team out of the NCAA Tournament, which is sometimes a death sentence for NIT play. Often teams who narrowly miss out on the NCAA Tournament struggle to find motivation to play in the NIT. 

The final four of the NIT takes place on March 31 with the championship game following two dats later on April 2.