NIT Projections

And, for those teams left out of the NCAA tournament, the NIT is available. The National Invitation Tournament is the nation's oldest post-season tournament. This year, the field has been reduced from 40 to 32 teams.

This is the second year that the NIT has been operated by the NCAA. As a result, regular season conference champions not selected for the NCAA tournament receive automatic bids to the NIT.

I'm not even going to try to project actual brackets for the NIT. However, I will take a stab at projecting the 32 teams chosen.

Automatic bids: Austin Peay, Marist, East Tennessee State, South Alabama, Toledo, Vermont, Delaware State, Mississippi Valley State

The other 24: Drexel, Missouri State, Stanford, Air Force, Arkansas, Bradley, Florida State, Utah State, Clemson, Alabama, Oklahoma State, Michigan, West Virginia, Ole Miss, UMass, Mississippi State, Georgia, Appalachian State, San Diego State, Akron, DePaul, Hofstra, Bucknell, Washington

That's not a bad tournament itself. Most of those teams could win a game or two in the NCAA tournament with the right matchup.

How Can I Forget?

How can I forget the Pre-Season NIT (or whatever they call it these days)

The Butler Bulldogs weren't expected to do a whole lot in this tournament. However, they knocked off Notre Dame and Indiana in consecutive nights to earn a trip to New York City. Once at the Garden, they defeated Tennessee and Gonzaga to win the championship. Not bad.

The Bulldogs weren't expecting to be in the finals, and followed up last Friday's final in New York with a game back home against MAC power Kent State. Butler won that one, too, and is now 7-0.

The Butler did it.