NIT Preview: Maryland at Syracuse

Just a brilliant scheduling move by the NIT and ESPN here. Counterprogramming the NCAA Tournament with the NIT is like putting the Arena League opposite the Super Bowl. One other thing to keep in mind if you happen to be watching this one tonight: all of the nation's top officials are most likely working NCAA games right now; what kind of crew is going to be calling this one?

NIT Preview: Morgan State at Virginia Tech

If you can't see the tables below, click back to the blog to see them.

I hate the new, politically-correct, NCAA-owned NIT. I'm not saying that the old NIT was perfect or anything--it was obviously biased towards teams from the Northeast, and there was always something that seemed just a little bit off about the way it was run--but at least it usually delivered some pretty solid basketball and compelling matchups in all of its games. Ever since the NCAA took over and instituted the silly rule that automatically invites all of the regular-season conference champions who crapped out of their conference tournaments, though, there have been five or six of these crazy lopsided first round games that exist for absolutely no reason. It's great that Morgan State won the MEAC, and it sucks that they lost in their conference tournament, but that's the way things go. There's no way Morgan State is a better team than Wake Forest or Utah or Washington or any of the dozens of teams that finished the season with winning records and would love to keep playing.