The National Invitation Tournament is changing its selection process in 2024 and will no longer award automatic bids to regular-season conference champions who do not win their conference tournament or are not among the 68 teams eligible to compete in the men’s NCAA Tournament were selected. the NIT board announced on Friday. Here’s what you need to know:
- Going forward, the NIT “guarantees two teams (based on NET rankings) from each of the six conferences (Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and Southeastern). The top two teams in the NET Rankings that do not qualify for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament in each conference will be selected regardless of win-loss record,” the announcement said.
- These 12 teams are guaranteed the opportunity to host a first-round game in the NIT.
- To round out the 32-team field, the NIT will “select the top 20 teams available” and select four teams from that pool to host the first round, with priority given to the “first four teams” of the NCAA Tournament.
Which rules are changing?
The NIT Board of Directors and the NCAA Men’s Basketball Rules Committee agreed to experimental rules for the 2024 tournament, including expanding the free throw lane from 12 feet to 16 feet. The new track will match the width used by the NBA and FIBA.
Games will continue to use the modified timeout format for the second half of the game introduced last year. This “eliminates the floating media timeout in the second half by making it one of five media interruptions. Media timeouts will occur at the first stoppage of play at the 17, 14, 8 and 4 minute marks in the second half.”
What this means for the college basketball landscape
The NIT’s decision to walk away from guaranteed spots for any regular-season conference winners who don’t win their league tournaments will undoubtedly strike fear into the mid-majors, and rightly so.
There is a legitimate concern that the essence of college basketball, namely the smaller schools, will be left behind as power conferences expand their boundaries and numbers. It is more than fair to see this as a step in that direction. In September, multiple league sources told The Athletic that an expansion of the NCAA Tournament may be necessary to ensure that power conferences don’t drop out of the tournament entirely. With that in mind, Fox floated the idea of a 16-team Power 6-only postseason tournament in Las Vegas.
And now the NIT is coming and displacing offerings that were previously reserved for medium-sized and smaller conferences. Instead, non-qualified Power 6 teams that already have all the competitive advantages – the larger financial pockets of the power leagues, the built-in scheduling against increased competition to boost a NET ranking, and NIL – are rewarded for their mediocrity. We’re not talking about second, third or even fourth seeds in the Power 6. In some places we’re talking about 10th and 11th. Last season, for example, Ohio State would have been 16-19 and would have received an NIT bid because the Buckeyes and Rutgers were ranked as the highest NET holders in the Big Ten that did not receive an NCAA bid.
Would NIT be won by North Texas, which had a higher NET than the Buckeyes but lost in the C-USA tournament? Perhaps. Maybe not.
And remember, the NIT also falls under the purview of the NCAA. While it may be premature to call this an NCAA Tournament tryout balloon, sometimes paranoia is warranted. — Dana O’Neil, senior college basketball writer
What you say
“The postseason college basketball landscape is becoming increasingly competitive for teams that do not qualify for March Madness,” Dan Gavitt, NIT board chairman and NCAA senior vice president of basketball, said in a statement. “Changing the selection process for the 2024 NIT is a necessary effort to further develop this historic tournament into a dynamic events market.”
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(Photo: Ethan Miller/Getty)