The National Invitational Tournament begins on Tuesday, March 12 and runs until March 30, when the finals will take place at Madison Square Garden in New York. Thirty-two teams will seed into a four-pronged bracket and play at the higher-seeded school’s campus site until the semifinal and championship rounds.
NIT selection show 2017 live stream: How to watch the bracket announcement online
The NIT selection show airs on Sunday at 8:30 p.m. ET.
The NIT awards automatic bids to teams that won their regular season conference title but failed to prevail in their conference tournaments and didn’t earn a bid to the NCAA tournament proper. Oakland is just such a team, having stumbled out the back door of the Horizon League’s tournament final against Youngstown. Belmont too won the OVC regular season title astride a 15-1 conference record, but fell in the conference semifinal round to upstart Jacksonville State, who went on to win the league’s Big Dance auto-bid for the first time in program history.
The bracketology of the NIT is a fluid affair, insofar as the tournament takes its cues from the grander NCAA Tournament. Those on the bubble for the Big Dance are of course mainstays in Small Dance discussions, so that a club like, say, Rhode Island has a foot on both sides of the divide. The Rams finished third at 13-5 in the Atlantic 10 this year, an absolute treasure of a conference that includes VCU, St. Bonaventure, and Saint Joseph’s.
Early projectors at NYCBuckets, DRatings, and BracketMatrix have coalesced around a handful of probable NIT-ready teams. In addition to URI, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Ole Miss, Valparaiso, and College of Charleston are but a few of those who should get in on Sunday, as well as Kansas State and Iowa. The CofC Cougars are an interesting team, finishing second in the Colonial Athletic Association’s regular season, and making it all the way to the conference tournament final, only to lose to UNC-Wilmington for the second time this year in the championship game.
One early projection matched Valpo up against Ole Miss, which would rehash one of the most exhilarating tournament basketball finishes of all time. A reheat of 1998’s “The Shot” would certainly constitute appointment viewing.
Below is everything you need to know for how to watch the NIT Selection Show.
How to watch:
Time: Sunday, March 12 at 8:30 p.m. ET
TV: ESPNU
Online streaming: WatchESPN
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