Big names join NIT selection committee

College basketball’s National Invitation Tournament adds a little name recognition today.

Hall of Fame coach Dean Smith, retired Purdue coach Gene Keady and former NCAA basketball tournament committee chairman C. M. Newton will be on a six- man selection and oversight committee.

Also appointed: former Santa Clara coach and athletics director Carroll Williams, who also once served on the NCAA basketball committee, former Air Force coach and current coaches’ association administrator Reggie Minton and longtime NIT executive Jack Powers. Newton will serve as chair.

The panel will run — and to some degree reshape — a 68- year-old institution purchased by the NCAA in August as part of a $ 56.5 million antitrust lawsuit settlement. The association is weighing changes in the sizes of both the 40- team postseason ; eld and the renamed NIT Season Tip- Off, the 16- team November event that opens today and Tuesday at eight sites. Both tournaments wind up in New York City’s Madison Square Garden.

The postseason bracket could shrink to 32 teams or expand to 48, in either case assuring berths for all regularseason conference champions that fall in their league tournaments and fail to land in the NCAA ; eld, according to NCAA vice president Greg Shaheen, the new NIT president. The early- season ; eld could grow to 32 teams, including a non- Division I power.

“ The committee will be studying all the options,” Shaheen said.

The panel also will select and seed the NIT ; elds, mirroring the format used for the NCAA tournament and eliminating in K uence by television partner ESPN.