The NIT - What's this all about? Teams not qualifying for the NCAA tournament
have the opportunity to be invited to one of three
other postseason tournaments:
The NIT features
a 32-team field chosen right after the NCAA chooses the 68 teams
in its tournament. It awards automatic bids to regular
season conference champions who do not otherwise go to the NCAA
tournament. Also, the first 4 teams out of the NCAA tournament
become automatic 1 seeds in the NIT.
The CBI features 16 teams and the CIT has up to 32 teams
exclusively from mid-major leagues or lower (only 20 teams
participated in 2018). The CIT requires teams to have a .500
record or better while the NIT and CBI do not have such a
requirement. The CIT also doesn't place teams in a bracket,
opting to place teams in matchups after the previous round has
concluded.
Schools have been known to decline an invitation to the CBI/CIT
tournaments due to the lack of interest in playing in a third-tier
tournament (e.g., "We're Indiana. We don't play in the CBI.") or
the pay-to-play nature of these tournaments.
To get a feel for what kind of teams are involved, these were the
2018 participants along with their record and RPI.