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.