History of the NIT and the NCAA Tournament

[Bill Marsh]

Turning Down Invitations to the NCAA Tournament

National Invitation Tournament - Wikipedia

Between 1939 and 1970 teams could compete in either tournament.

In 1945, The New York Times indicated that many teams could get bids to enter either tournament, which was not uncommon in that day. In any case, since the mid-1950s, the NCAA tournament has been popularly regarded by most individuals as the major post season tourney, with conference champions and the majority of the top-ranked teams participating in it.

Nevertheless, as late as 1970, Coach Al McGuire of Marquette, the 8th-ranked team in the final AP poll of the season, spurned an NCAA at-large invitation because the Warriors were going to be placed in the NCAA Midwest Regional (Fort Worth, Texas) instead of closer to home in the Mideast Regional (Dayton, Ohio).

The team played in the 1970 NIT instead, which it won. This led the NCAA to decree in 1971 that any school to which it offered a bid must accept it or be prohibited from participating in postseason competition, reducing the pool of teams that could accept an NIT invitation.

Flyers Revisiting their Roots in NIT – Dayton Daily News - March 28, 2010

A Fervor Unmatched

Started in 1938, the NIT is a year older than the NCAA Tournament and for a couple of decades — with a better TV contract and a marquee setting — it was more prestigious.

Coach Tom Blackburn was from New York and once he took over at UD, he made the tournament his ultimate goal. And he became more of an NIT man after his first — and only — NCAA Tournament experience.

Back in the early days, a team could play in both tournaments and that’s what UD did in 1952. After finishing as runners-up in the 1952 NIT, the Flyers headed to the 1952 NCAA Tournament and a match-up with Illinois in Chicago. “The NCAA had a lot of background with the Big Ten,” former coach Don Donoher said. “And the way Blackburn told the story, at the banquet the night before the game, one of the (NCAA) officials took the microphone and wished Illinois luck.”

Not that the Illini needed it. Dayton was whistled for 41 personal fouls, still second all-time for an NCAA Tournament game. Five Flyers fouled out, and while Illinois made 32 of 47 free throws, Dayton — which lost by 19 — made 13 of 18.

Donoher said that left “a sour taste” with Blackburn, who focused on the NIT and sent 10 teams to New York in a 12-year span.

In the process, the city of Dayton fell in love with the tournament. “The NIT was a big deal to everyone back then.”

And it became even more so in Dayton when the Flyers won the tournament in 1962. Bill Chmielewski, the Flyers sophomore big man, was named the MVP and with UD fans mobbing him on the court, he turned his award upside down and wore it on his head like a helmet. And the photograph of that played in newspapers across the country.

“When we got back to Dayton, people packed the airport,” Chmielewski said. “Coming down the expressway, people were waving signs and blowing their car horns. The Fieldhouse was packed, too. That’s when I realized what University of Dayton sports meant to this town.”

I couldn’t find a reference for the number of NCAA Tournament invitations that Tom Blackburn turned down between 1952 and 1962 in favor of the NIT, but it was a good few, and could be as many as eight. Coach Blackburn loved The Garden. Related HLOH post: The Dayton Flyers at Madison Square Garden.



Marquette Golden Eagles Men’s Basketball - Wikipedia

Marquette is the last university to spurn an NCAA invite and did so due to a low seeding in the 1970 NCAA Tournament and having to travel. They were ranked 8th in the country at the time and were one of the favorites to win the NCAA championship. They were invited to the 1970 NIT which they won. The NCAA later instituted a rule which forbid an NCAA Division I level men's basketball team from spurning an NCAA bid for an NIT bid. An antitrust case by the NIT ensued over this issue, and the NCAA settled out of court.

1970 National Invitational Tournament - Wikipedia

The 1970 National Invitation Tournament was unique in that coach Al McGuire of Marquette University, unhappy with his team's placement, turned down a bid to the NCAA tournament and elected to play in the NIT instead. His Marquette Warriors went on to claim the NIT Championship.

Excellent post. People today don't give enough credit to the value of an NIT bid in the era before UCLA began to dominate. Back then, the NIT champ was usually a ranked team. Until the late 50s, the urban Catholics especially, routinely chose to play in the NIT over the NCAAs. If you just look at NCAA bids, you would never realize that teams like DePaul, Seton Hall, Duquesne, LaSalle, and Dayton were elite powerhouse programs during the first 2 decades of postseason play (the polls from this era will confirm this, which is why schools like LaSalle, and Duquesne still rank surprisingly high on those various all time lists despite doing little the last 40 years). The appeal of playing in The Garden, especially for teams in the northeast, and Great Lakes, was far more attractive than going to play some football school in a podunk town, where the refs were likely to screw you. Ask that Bona fan how much the Bonnies enjoyed the NCAAs when the Stith brothers were there. UCLA put to rest any doubts about who the best team was each year though, which helped accelerate the decline of the NIT.

Excellent points.

There were several problems with the NCAA tournament as a measure of the best teams behind the tournament champions.

1. As mentioned above, the NCAA passed a rule in the early 1950s prohibiting any team from participating in both tournaments.

2. Many football leagues prohibited their members from playing in any postseason tournament other than the NCAA.

3. The NCAA took only one team per conference until 1975.

4. This effectively meant that a number of top teams were left out of the NCAA tournament and/or postseason play entirely - especially when a conference had 2 top 5 or top 10 teams in the same season. A classic example was 1960 when the Missouri Valley Conference had both #1 Cincinnati and #4 Bradley. UC went to the Final 4, losing to defending NC UC-Berkeley. Fortunately for Bradley, the MVC did allow its members to go to the NIT, which Bradley went on to win that year.

5. Because the NCAA tournament rigidly adhered to predetermined regions, top 5 or top 10 teams were sometimes matched up with each other in the first or 2nd round, insuring that a potential Final 4 or Elite 8 team never got a shot at advancing.

6. The other side of that coin was that rigid adherence to regional placements sometimes resulted in extremely weak divisions. As late as 1965, a glaring example was the old Midwest region which didn’t have a single top 20 team that year. In contrast, the NIT was still attracting ranked teams in this days. History refers to Wichita State in 1965 as a “ Final Four team”. WSU didn’t beat a single ranked team to get there and then was blown out by UCLA (108-89) and Princeton (118-82) in the consolation game. Meanwhile, St John’s won the NIT that year by beating #8 Villanova. St John’s is certainly the team more worthy of being remembered by history.

The term “Final Four” was coined in 1975, but it has been applied retroactively to teams all the way back to the first NCAA tournament in 1939. How does that term have any meaning in a 6 or 8 team tournament when a team could be in the Final 4 without winning a single game? It really has no meaning before the open era which happened to begin in 1975, the same year the term was invented.

Today we accept the fact that champions are determined on the court or field of play. Back in the early decades of college basketball postseason play, it was still determined by vote - something which college football continued to do right into the 1990s. We still see Herculean efforts to retroactively identify the “true champion” via computer analysis, which is as meaningless as a poll if you believe in championships being won on the court.

Unranked CCNY won the NIT in 1950 and would have been relegated to a footnote in history due to the blind acceptance of NCAA champs as the national title holder, if they hadn’t opted to go on from the NIT to the NCAA tournament which they won as well. They were followed within a few years by Seton Hall in 1953 and Holy Cross in 1954, both of which can make a strong case for being the top teams in each of those seasons. But we’ll never know because they didn’t play the NCAA champs. And history ignores them just as they would have CCNY. And just as they do the 1949 San Francisco Dons, the true national champs that year. Before winning the NCAA tournament in 1949, Kentucky competed in the NIT where they were eliminated by Loyola (Chi), who went on to lose the championship game to San Francisco. With NCAA champs Kentucky in the NIT, that was indisputably the true national championship tournament that year. At least for anyone who believes in championships being earned on the field of play rather than being awarded by vote or by retroactive elevation of the NCAA tournament into something it never was in those days.

[gtmoBlue]

Ahemmm. Wow. Nice rearview mirror discussion.

The new ACC proposal to a 72-team field is just more of the same since 1975. You don't have to win a conference, just be a member of a top 6 conference and you're in.

[Fieldhouse Flyer]

Post # 1: The BE Team Records - 5 Years in

Team - Overall -- Conf -- BET – NCAA

Vnova -- 165-21 -- 77-13 --11-2 --15-3
Xavier ---125-53 -- 57-33 -- 7-5 -- 7-5
Prov. --- 110-62 -- 51-39 -- 7-4 -- 1-5
Butler -- 105-62 -- 47-43 -- 1-5 -- 5-4
Creight - 107-64 -- 47-43 -- 5-5 -- 1-3
SHU ---- 101-65 -- 44-46 -- 6-4 -- 1-3
Marq. --- 90-74 -- 40-50 -- 3-5 -- 0-1
G'town -- 69-62 -- 37-53 -- 2-5 -- 1-1
SJU ------ 79-85 -- 32-58 -- 2-5 -- 0-1
DePaul -- 53-109 --18-72 -- 1-5 -- 0-0

Excellent thread and post, GumbyDamnit! Thank you for the time and effort you put into compiling the numbers for the post.
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For those of you interested, I have compiled the following listing:

National Invitation Tournament - Wikipedia

The first NIT in 1938 invited a field of 6 teams, with all games played at Madison Square Garden in downtown Manhattan.
The field was expanded to 8 teams in 1941, 12 in 1949, 14 in 1965, 16 in 1968, 24 in 1979, 32 in 1980, and 40 teams from 2002 through 2006.
In 2007, the tournament reverted to the [b]current 32-team format.

NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament - Wikipedia

Expansion of the NCAA Tournament Field
• 1939–1950: 8 teams
• 1951–1952: 16 teams
• 1953–1974: varied between 22 and 25 teams
• 1975–1978: 32 teams
• 1979: 40 teams
• 1980–1982: 48 teams
• 1983: 52 teams (four play-in games before the tournament)
• 1984: 53 teams (five play-in games before the tournament)
• 1985–2000: 64 teams
• 2001–2010: 65 teams (one play-in game to determine whether the 64th or 65th team plays in the first round)
• 2011–present: 68 teams (four play-in games before all remaining teams compete in the round of 64.)

Years … Teams in NIT + Teams in NCAA Tournament = Total No. of Teams in NIT + NCAA Tournaments

1938 ... 6 + 0 = 6 teams
1939 and 1940 … 6 + 8 = 14 teams
1941 to 1948 … 8 + 8 = 16 teams
1949 and 1950 … 12 + 8 = 20 teams
1951 and 1952 … 12 + 16 = 28 teams
1953 to 1964 … 12 + (22 to 25) = 34 to 37 teams
1965 to 1967 … 14 + (22 to 25) = 36 to 39 teams
1968 to 1974 … 16 + (22 to 25) = 38 to 41 teams
1975 to 1978 … 16 + 32 = 48 teams
1979 … 24 + 40 = 64 teams
1980 to 1982 … 32 + 48 = 80 teams
1983 … 32 + 52 = 84 teams
1984 … 32 + 53 = 85 teams
1985 to 2000 … 32 + 64 = 96 teams
2001 … 32 + 65 = 97 teams
2002 to 2006 … 40 + 65 = 105 teams
2007 to 2010 … 32 + 65 = 97 teams
2011 to Present … 32 + 68 = 100 teams
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Are we seriously having 500 word posts about the NIT?

Yes. All nine of the BE’s Catholic schools have played in at least one NIT Semifinal and seven BE Catholic schools have won a total of 12 NIT championships:

St. John's is also the all-time leader in both No. of NIT Championships won and No. of NIT Semifinal Appearances.

NIT Championships and Semifinal Appearances - Wikipedia

Total No. of NIT Championships

No. of NIT Championships - School

5 - St. John's
2 - Providence
1 - DePaul, Marquette, Seton Hall, Villanova, Xavier

Total No. of NIT Semifinal Appearances

No. of NIT Semifinal Appearances – School

15 – St. John's*
7 - Providence
5 - DePaul, Villanova
4 - Marquette
3 - Georgetown, Seton Hall
2 - Xavier
1 – Creighton and many, many others.

These schools helped forge the rich history and legacy of the NIT, and consequently, the NIT holds a greater value for these three schools than for most other schools. It is self-evident that schools having relatively few NIT Semifinal Appearances would not have much nostalgic interest in the tournament which formerly decided college basketball's National Champions, but that does not diminish the importance of the NIT in college basketball history.

It is understandable that a Butler fan would have little appreciation for the NIT Champions of yesteryear.

The NIT Was Awesome Until the NCAA Ruined Basketball – OZY – January 16, 2018

When selecting its field, NIT organizers had a simple goal: Put the nation’s best teams in a single elimination competition — no matter where the selected schools were located.

“In those years, the NIT was a more prestigious tournament than the NCAA,” former DePaul head coach Ray Meyer wrote in his autobiography Coach. “It was played in New York, while the NCAA was played on scattered campuses in smaller towns. The schools took home thousands of dollars as their share of the gate receipts for playing in Madison Square Garden. In the NCAA eliminations, they were lucky to make expenses. So the NIT meant a lot more to a struggling private school like DePaul.”

[Fieldhouse Flyer]

.
(5) Saturday. Final Day of the regular season 3/7/20 – Post #114

Something I didn't realize before... SJU has the most NIT titles of all time. So naturally I looked up wikipedia for numbers nobody cares about..

SJU 6 Titles / 16 Final Fours
Providence 2 Titles / 7 Final Fours
DePaul 1 Title / 5 Final Fours
Villanova 1 Title / 5 Final Fours
Marquette 1 Title / 4 Final Fours
Seton Hall 1 Title / 3 Final Fours
Xavier 1 Title / 2 Final Fours
Connecticut 1 Title / 2 Final Fours
Georgetown 3 Final Fours
Creighton 1 Final Four
Butler 8 appearances

Thanks, kayako.

[Fieldhouse Flyer]

Please consider this post to be nothing more than another journal entry in a history of unforeseeable duration. I chose the syracuse.com article because it was the only one that explicitly mentioned the NIT in its title. The 2019-20 season was the most 'unforeseeable' season in the history of college basketball, so its inclusion is merited on this thread.

NCAA cancels all winter and spring championships, including NCAA Tournament and NIT - syracuse.com - March 12, 2020

It doesn’t appear that this thread will be needed again until March 2021, when hopefully both tournaments will proceed as planned, and those pesky mid-major teams won’t be hogging all of the headlines.
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