Congrats to ETSU and Jacksonville with their post-season appearances.

Looking past the NCAA and NIT to the other two post-season tournaments, I have to ask the question. Did the ASun get ignored in the CBI and CIT tournaments or did ASun teams opt out? Belmont played in a tournament last year, winning the first round before getting beat by tourney champ Old Dominion. So was that experience enough for Belmont to decide to turn down an offer? Does it not pay enough to cover expenses?

Here’s why I question. Belmont is ranked 135 in the RPI. The list below is those teams ranked lower than Belmont that are invited to the CBI and CIT. I also inserted the ASun teams not invited or turned down the offer.

135 Belmont – Not In Tournament
143 Boston U.
145 Hofstra
147 George Washington
155 Eastern Kentucky
157 George Mason
175 Loyola Marymount
177 MTSU
182 Campbell – Not In Tournament
184 Oregon St.
207 Lipscomb – Not In Tournament
216 South Dakota
217 Portland

(03-15-2010 12:01 PM)Bruin2002 Wrote:  Congrats to ETSU and Jacksonville with their post-season appearances.

Looking past the NCAA and NIT to the other two post-season tournaments, I have to ask the question. Did the ASun get ignored in the CBI and CIT tournaments or did ASun teams opt out? Belmont played in a tournament last year, winning the first round before getting beat by tourney champ Old Dominion. So was that experience enough for Belmont to decide to turn down an offer? Does it not pay enough to cover expenses?

Here’s why I question. Belmont is ranked 135 in the RPI. The list below is those teams ranked lower than Belmont that are invited to the CBI and CIT. I also inserted the ASun teams not invited or turned down the offer.

135 Belmont – Not In Tournament
143 Boston U.
145 Hofstra
147 George Washington
155 Eastern Kentucky
157 George Mason
175 Loyola Marymount
177 MTSU
182 Campbell – Not In Tournament
184 Oregon St.
207 Lipscomb – Not In Tournament
216 South Dakota
217 Portland

These tournaments are much more about money and attendance than actual RPI's. I suspect we were "outbid" to participate. I don't have first hand knowledge of that, but there are a couple of articles floating around about a couple of the schools who knew they weren't going to the NIT and negotiated home games in advance of even the NCAA selection. I'm confident Belmont would have participated if they could have "afforded" it. Especially since Byrd was on the voting committee for the Mid Major top 25.

I believe another factor for these tournaments is a teams ability to draw fans, which as we all know Belmont doesn't have the highest attendance. I'm going to assume that larger schools like Boston U, Eastern Kentucky and Oregon St. bring in a lot more fans than Belmont or the other two ASun schools do.