Mississippi State & West Virginia Get to the NIT Final Four

The NIT's an easy target for ridicule (as you'll see when some team wins it and the clever "We're #66!" headlines make their annual appearance), but I'm choosing to be a glass-is-half-full guy about it. The teams on the wrong side of the NCAA bubble are, in many cases, playing some very good basketball.

Mississippi State found a way to bottle up future lottery pick Al Thornton, and whooped Florida State by 15. It wasn't so much a bottling up, actually, as just finding a way to keep him off the floor. Thornton got in early foul trouble and played just 22 minutes.

For their trouble, they'll get to play West Virginia, who beat NC State in Morgantown, 71-66. Senior Frank Young had 25 in his last game at the Coliseum, burying threes in peoples' grills all night long. He set the record for career three-pointers by a Mountaineer, and got a pretty nice compliment from NC State's Gavin Grant, the poor sap assigned to guard him:

"I'm in his shirt and he still made one," Grant said of Young. "They made big, crazy shots. They deserved to win."

The Bulldogs and Mountaineers will meet next Tuesday at the Garden (time still to be determined). The other two quarterfinals, Syracuse vs. Clemson, and Air Force vs. DePaul, are tomorrow night.