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 Basketball Classic has up to 32
teams.
Schools have been known to decline an invitation to the
CBI/Basketball Classic 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
2022 participants along with their record and NET ranking.