Missouri St. among snubbed schools to join the NIT field

INDIANAPOLIS -- Cincinnati, Maryland, Michigan and Louisville were seeded No. 1 Sunday in the revamped National Invitation Tournament.

Also among the 40 teams selected for the NIT were six that won regular-season championships but lost in their conference tournaments and weren't picked for the NCAA tournament.

The NCAA bought the rights to the NIT in August as part of a settlement ending their four-year legal battle. Among the changes in the selection criteria, all Division I conference regular-season champions who weren't in the NCAA's field of 65 were guaranteed NIT bids.

The opening round of eight games will begin at campus sites today.

It's the second straight year Maryland (19-12) missed the NCAA and went instead to the NIT. The Terrapins reached the semifinals of the tournament last year before losing to eventual champion South Carolina.

The Missouri Valley Conference, which landed a record four teams in the NCAA tournament, will send two more to the NIT: Missouri State and Creighton. Both got No. 2 seeds.

Missouri State will play either Stanford or Virginia, while Creighton will play the Temple-Akron winner.

Creighton also struggled down the stretch, losing four of its last six games.

"There will be no whining or complaining from us," Bluejays coach Dana Altman said.

The other No. 2 seeds are Florida State, which is in the same bracket with Cincinnati and will play the Miami (Ohio)-Butler winner; and Saint Joseph's, which is in Maryland's bracket and will play either Penn State or Rutgers.

Another NIT pick that hoped to get an NCAA bid was Hofstra, which lost to North Carolina-Wilmington in the Colonial Athletic final and will open against Nebraska as a No. 3 seed.

Hofstra won 14 of its last 16 games and beat NCAA participant George Mason twice, including in the conference semifinals.

"I need someone to explain this process to me," Hofstra coach Tom Pecora said. "I thought we did enough to get our RPI to the right level (for the NCAA), we reached the conference championship game. Obviously, how you finish the season is not that important."

The other No. 3 seeds are Houston, South Carolina and the University of Miami.

The NIT semifinals and finals will be in Madison Square Garden in New York on March 28 and March 30.