State teams narrowly miss out on NCAAs
It was close but no cigar. With the Arkansas-Little Rock men, Arkansas State men and Central Arkansas women all advancing to the finals of their conference tournament, there was a chance the Natural State would have someone in the NCAA Tournament, either men or women, but all came up short.
However, the UA women are in the WBIT and the Trojans and Red Wolves’ men will be in Daytona, Fla., competing in the CBI.
The Razorbacks face host Tulsa at 6:30 p.m Thursday, ASU faces Bethune-Cookman at noon Saturday and UALR faces Fairfield at 2:30 p.m. Sunday.
March took on a new degree of madness when seven teams turned down a bid to play in the NIT. The news actually started last Friday when Ole Miss Coach Chris Beard said the Rebels’ season was completed.
All the programs are notable and include Indiana, Memphis, Oklahoma, Pittsburgh, St. John’s and Syracuse.
With a new rule this year that the top six leagues get at least two teams in the NIT and the Rebels turning it down, the door for Georgia, who tied Arkansas for 11th place. The Bulldogs had a better NCAA NET ranking and owned a tie-breaker because it beat South Carolina during the regular season.
Probably the oddest team to turn down the NIT was St. John’s since it is coached by Rick Pitino, who is from New York where the NIT Final Four is played, unless he was afraid he’d be criticized if the Red Storm didn’t make it that far.
Or maybe he was just ticked the NCAA, which also owns the NIT, didn’t invite the Red Storm who had an NCAA NET ranking of No. 32 and finished fifth in the Big East. That conference got only three bids, but one of them was defending national champion UConn, which got the overall No. 1 seed.
All seven head coaches said they had great respect for the NIT before they rejected it.
If anyone should have felt like it had been stood up at the alter it was Indiana State, which won the Missouri Valley regular-season title, was 28-6 with a NCAA NET ranking of No. 29 but were upset in the conference tournament. The Sycamores are now a No. 1 seed in the NIT, along with Seton Hall, Wake Forest and Villanova.
Since the creation of the NCAA NET rankings in 2019, Indiana State is the bestranked team to not make the NCAA Tournament.
...
The SEC and Big 12 led the way with eight teams each in the NCAA Tournament, but Colorado drew the short straw and will play Wednesday night against Boise State in Dayton in what is officially called the First Four but is commonly known as play-in games.
Those are No. 10 seed teams and the winner will advance to play Florida.
Others in play-in games are No. 10 Colorado State and Virginia, with the winner getting No. 7 Texas.
There are two games with No. 16 seeds facing off. The winner of Grambling State against Montana State gets No. 1 Purdue while the Howard-Wagner winner will face No. 1 North Carolina.
. . .
In total, 34 states are represented in the 2024 field of the NCAA Tournament, but what stands out is there are three states that border each other that didn’t get an invite.
Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri were all shut out.
Maybe it is a little ironic they are all in the SEC footprint, which is known as football country, but the conference did get eight bids: No. 2 seed Tennessee, No. 3 seed Kentucky, No. 4 seeds Auburn and Alabama, No. 6 seed South Carolina, No. 7 seed Florida, No. 8 seed Mississippi State and No. 9 seed Texas A&M.
All had winning records in SEC play except for the Aggies and they played their way in during the SEC Tournament when they knocked off Ole Miss and Kentucky.