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Thursday, May 9, 2024
The championship game for the 80th annual National Invitation Tournament is set, and in a postseason marked by pleasant surprises advancing deep, it’s maybe only fitting that two of the biggest surprises of the entire season will square off to settle this venerable event.
The NIT is down to four teams who will meet in New York, and one of them will become a champion for the first time, though one coach has led a program to the title twice.
The underdogs are alive and well in the college basketball postseason. One just has to look a little bit beyond the NCAA Tournament to find them.
You can collect the votes right now, and probably don’t even need to count them, the choice is so obvious. In a stunning upset, the winner for the breakout performance by a conference (non-NCAA Tournament edition) goes to the Western Athletic Conference.
Much the same as the NFL season opening on a Thursday night or Major League Baseball beginning on a Sunday night, the NCAA Tournament beginning with play-in games on a Tuesday night-starting with two 16 seeds against each other-will never feel right. That said, as long as the NCAA continues playing its First Four, then Tuesday night was a pretty good start for a tourney.
Friday brought us a day full of drama and decisiveness, great games and important results all the way around. We also saw one team continue to remind us that they can make a big run later this month.
On the final Saturday of February, a day that featured several big-time top 15 matchups got a jolt in one of its final games of the day.
There was a huge conference game played in North Carolina Thursday night, one hyped by big names beforehand. The game was part of a series that has regularly provided drama of late, and once again delivered with spades. Of course we’re talking about the big one in the Big South played Thursday between UNC Asheville and Winthrop,
Tuesday was one of the busier days of the college basketball season, but certainly its longest one with games filling literally almost every minute of the 24 hours.
Good morning. We are now on the eve of the regular season, just one day away. We conclude Hoopville’s preseason rundown of all 32 NCAA Division I conferences, starting in the Midwest, moving South and then to the West:
