This is a guest post by Ronak Patel
Born and raised in Harlem, New York; Khalid McCaskill’s exposure to basketball came early. Continue reading “Khalid McCaskill Brings Pac-12 Confidence To Patriot League”
As the major conference tournaments kick into high gear this week there’s a special type of bid stealer on the loose. High-major teams that have so-so records against their peers are hoping for one last shot to prove that they should play in the NIT this season. You see a lot of them at the bottom of the bracket already. UCLA, Pittsburgh, Colorado and LSU all sit somewhere around the cut-line. The Panthers in particular are an interesting case. They’re 17-16 overall after losing to Georgetown in the Big East Tournament, but the Panthers also have 14 losses to Top 100 competitors. I also watched them live on Tuesday and was sort of impressed. Is that enough to play in the NIT? I’m not really sure.
The Pac-12 tournament is just starting up and it should prove, along with the Atlantic 10 tournament, to be one of the tournaments that impacts this NIT bracket the most. UCLA, Colorado, Stanford, Arizona and Oregon have opportunities to play themselves out of the bracket (in both directions) during the next few days. Also, Arkansas, Maryland and New Mexico State all still have an opportunity to improve their resumes. Those three teams are sitting outside of the NIT looking in right now. Of course, more bid thieves could make this a moot point. Three are already hanging out at the bottom of the bracket.
This is the latest projected NIT bracket I have through Sunday’s results. Once again I used Jerry Palm’s projected NCAA field to figure out the at-large bids and determine where I was going with the NIT bracket. Thus if you’re wondering who to complain to about your team being in the NCAA field or the NIT talk to him. Miami (FL) and USF both scored big wins on Sunday that pushed them up near the top of the bracket. Also, my seed scrubbing was done using CBS’ team comparison feature, which made this much easier to do. I expect that there will be a ton of conference tournament upsets, so if you’re a seven or eight seed there is still work to do.
NYC Buckets Archive 