Drake to CIT

[freddycat68]

This should mark the end of any MVC team ever accepting one of these EIEIO invites ever again. I have no idea what Drake thought there was to gain from this misadventure, but all we got was an MVC co-champion getting stiffed with a road game in a crap tourney and losing to some directional also-ran from a conference dangling from the undertail of NCAA Division I like a precarious dingle-berry. And the point was . . . ?

[glm38]

This should mark the end of any MVC team ever accepting one of these EIEIO invites ever again. I have no idea what Drake thought there was to gain from this misadventure, but all we got was an MVC co-champion getting stiffed with a road game in a crap tourney and losing to some directional also-ran from a conference dangling from the undertail of NCAA Division I like a precarious dingle-berry. And the point was . . . ?

It's not always like that. MSU s run in the cit in 2010 gave the team valuable experience and was a lot of fun for our fans.

[BCPanther]

Weird situation.

Drake would have hosted if their administration wasn't running an NCAA Tournament site.

I do agree that the league should steer clear of the CIT going forward.

[Drakey]

I think it is hard for a team to focus on playing a team like Southern Utah on the road when you were so close to a meaningful post-season game.

[mvfcfan]

I tend to disagree. If my team had 20+ wins, I would want them to play in a tournament, even if it was the CBI or CIT, just because they earned the right to be in one. If my team had less than 20 wins however, I wouldn't want my team to be in a tournament, because they didn't earn that right. Just my thoughts.

The problem with Drake is that they were just too beat up with injuries.

[freddycat68]

I tend to disagree. If my team had 20+ wins, I would want them to play in a tournament, even if it was the CBI or CIT, just because they earned the right to be in one. If my team had less than 20 wins however, I wouldn't want my team to be in a tournament, because they didn't earn that right. Just my thoughts.

The problem with Drake is that they were just too beat up with injuries.

Yeah, and I didn't realize their athletic people were tied up with the NCAA right now, and it seems like that accounts for the road game. I'm persuadable on this. Last season (2017-18) BU won 20 games and turned these tourneys down, but then again that team didn't win a regular season title. At any rate too bad to see the loss.

[pafan]

I tend to agree that these tournaments aren't really worth it. Neither tournament has lived up to the idea of being the next 16/32 schools out of the NCAA/NIT. In reality, winning the CIT in 2019 is substantially less prestigious than being 12-6 in the MVC, even in a real bad MVC season.

There are 20 teams (of 26) in the CIT who are outside the top 150 in NET, and 8 outside the top 200. Drake was second in NET among all these teams, behind only East Tennessee State (who also bailed out early, losing to Wisconsin-Green Bay).

As a fan, it's really hard to be excited for a road game at the 7th place team in the Big Sky conference (Southern Utah), with the reward for a win being a date with the 5th place team in the WAC (Cal St. Bakersfield). The winner of that game will probably go to NJIT (5th place, ASun) or Louisiana Monroe (6th place, Sun Belt).



For what it's worth, the CBI is only a little stronger this year. There are 5 teams (of 16) in the CBI who are outside the top 150 in NET, and 3 teams outside the top 200.

[TheAsianSensation]

The problem is there's always a small pocket of 8-12 teams who get snubbed from the NIT who deserve bids....but there aren't 48 teams, which means you can't fill out these fields properly.

In a hypothetical world, if every team accepted a CIT bid, you could build the following 16-team tournament that would be pretty damn sexy:

Bucknell (21-12, 13-5 Patriot) at Stony Brook (23-9, 12-4 AEast)
Radford (19-11, 12-4 Big South) at Charleston (23-9, 12-6 Colonial)

Austin Peay (20-11, 13-5 OVC) at East Tennessee St (22-9, 13-5 SoCon)
Bowling Green (20-12, 12-6 MAC) at Western Kentucky (20-14, 11-7 CUSA)

Southern Miss (17-12, 11-7 CUSA) at Georgia Southern (19-12, 12-6 Fun Belt)
Jacksonville St (22-9, 15-3 OVC) at Drake (22-10, 12-6 MVC)

Omaha (20-11, 13-3 Summit) at Grand Canyon (19-14, 10-6 WAC)
Utah Valley (23-9, 12-4 WAC) at San Francisco (20-10, 9-7 WCC)



But not all teams accept, and the CIT tries to go to 32. Hence trouble.

[Drakey]

How many of those teams actually agreed to play in a tournament?

[TheAsianSensation]

4 in the CBI, 2 in the CIT, 10 stayed home.