Who's #98? First College Basketball Invitational Field Announced

The College Basketball Invitational was created because, apparently, there was such an interest in non-NCAA tournament events that the N.I.T. couldn't contain it (obviously, I'm being sarcastic).

So, while the NCAA and NIT fields have been set, the CBI got to look through the rest of the clearance rack and pick off sixteen teams for their own little dance.

Tuesday: Richmond at Virginia, Houston at Nevada, Brown at Ohio, Rider at Old Dominion
Wednesday: Cincinnati at Bradley, Valparaiso at Washington, Miami-OH at Tulsa, Utah at UTEP

The winners of these games will face off next Monday. The semifinals will take place on Wednesday, March 26th. Then there will be a best-of-three championship series taking place the following week. Most of the games will be on Fox College Sports ... a network most people don't get. And even if they did, they're probably not watching this.

Look, I'm all for letting these kids extend their collegiate careers. Really, I am. But this is dumb. Credibility is shot when you invite a 13-18 Cincinnati team.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

3-20-2008 @ 12:47AM

Ken Howes said...

The CBI isn't just picking up the NIT's leftovers; it competed with the NIT for those teams that hadn't made it into the NCAA tournament. Take a look at the teams that are in there. These are some pretty good teams. It's not a matter of "Who's #98?" The following teams were ranked highly enough that they could well have gotten NIT bids:

Nevada 72
Ohio 77
Houston 81
Tulsa 83
Valparaiso 86

You can ask Butler and Wisconsin whether Valparaiso's a third-echelon team. Both pulled out their wins over Valpo in the final two minutes of the game, Butler in the final 10 seconds. The teams not in the top 97 include teams like Virginia and Washington, not exactly small-time basketball programs.

The simple fact is that there are a great many good college basketball teams, quite enough to fill the brackets of three tournaments. I would guess that the genesis of the CBI was when the NIT cut back from 40 to 32 teams. This will be quality basketball.