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John Feinstein is reporting that the 2021 NIT is on.

BUT

It will only be a 16 team tournament played entirely in New York (bad decision) and will not award automatic bids to regular season conference champions who lose in their respective conference tournaments (worse decision).

https://thespun.com/college-hoops/nit-re...tournament

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Another story out there is the West Coast Conference pondering stealing an additional bid to the NCAA tournament with rumors that NCAA-locks Gonzaga and BYU are both considering skipping the league's post-season tournament.

https://www.sltrib.com/sports/byu-cougar...s-opt-out/

The NCAA needs to put a stop to that. On last Saturdays bracket show, the committee did say that any conference who plans to hold a tournament to decide their representative is expected to have all required teams participate. They need to go a step further and rule that any conference that has qualified teams opt out without verifiable virus issues lose their automatic bid. This type of dirty underhanded, unsportsmanlike behavior must be dealt with harshly.

I would personally go a step further and hit them hard by demoting its at-large teams by two full lines in the NCAA bracket as a penalty for sitting out..in this case taking Gonzaga to a 3 and BYU to a 12 (and a play in game).

Yeah, something has to be done. This will happen in every conference if there is no consequence for doing so.

The NCAA basketball committee is the real problem. The field should be expanded to 96 or 128 versus 68 if you want a fair way to select the at large teams.
Or reduce the NCAA field to 48 to stop committee from cherry picking the last 20 teams to fill out the bracket.
I have no problem with the WCC picking up an extra bid they might receive over a power 5 conference. The current system is completely rigged. Are you worried about the possibility of leaving out an 11th place Big 10 team or the 10th place ACC team?

Agree with bigdunks. For years I’ve been arguing that if you’re less than .500 in conference (including conference tournament), you can’t receive an at large bid. It’s not a total fix, but it’s a start

(02-17-2021 07:03 PM)bigdunks Wrote:  The field should be expanded to 96 or 128 versus 68 if you want a fair way to select the at large teams.

So, you think an expanded field will lead to more mid-majors getting bids? If you believe that, I've got some property I'd like to sell you... The fact is, if the tourney expanded we would just see even more trash teams from the power 5 getting bids over deserving mid-majors.

(02-17-2021 07:31 PM)LairDweller Wrote:  Agree with bigdunks. For years I’ve been arguing that if you’re less than .500 in conference (including conference tournament), you can’t receive an at large bid. It’s not a total fix, but it’s a start

I agree with that for sure. My issue isn’t the wcc doing this, my issue is the big ten, and pac 12, and acc, etc. pulling the same stunt.

Since the NCAA owns both tournaments, I would like to see the two equally filled with - say 64 teams - teams, play out the brackets as they do now and then have the top team from each side play a best of 3, 5 or 7 series for the NC. The NC series would be the only games added to a team's schedule that are not played now.

(02-17-2021 07:41 PM)BatesUAB Wrote:  

(02-17-2021 07:03 PM)bigdunks Wrote:  The field should be expanded to 96 or 128 versus 68 if you want a fair way to select the at large teams.

So, you think an expanded field will lead to more mid-majors getting bids? If you believe that, I've got some property I'd like to sell you... The fact is, if the tourney expanded we would just see even more trash teams from the power 5 getting bids over deserving mid-majors.

Expanding the field to 128 would include all deserving mid-majors.