Turning down post-season hoops bids — was Crean right?

Older, get-off-my-lawn college basketball fans had to give a silent cheer when Tom Crean, the former head coach at Marquette, Indiana and Georgia, cut loose of strong words while serving as an analyst on the NIT bracket reveal on ESPN2.
He railed against teams like St. John’s, Ole Miss, Pittsburgh, Oklahoma and Memphis for turning down invitations to the NIT.
“There’s no question about it,” Crean said, “I would want to coach. I would want to develop my team. You’ve got bigger staffs than you’ve ever had. There’s plenty of time for the [transfer] portal. There’s plenty of time to talk to recruits. There’s plenty of time to negotiate NIL deals.
“There’s not plenty of time to play. There’s not plenty of time to get your players on the floor and give them a chance to get better. There’s not plenty of time for guys to continue to play that may never get to play again.”
He ended it by saying it’s “absolutely ridiculous.”
Good TV for sure. But is he right?
I must be honest. I was one of many who always referred to it as the “Not Important Tournament.” Yay, the winner could say, we’re No. 69!
Also, I get it for some of the above teams that declined. After missing the NCAA tournament, would the NIT be fun? Would the team’s collective heart be into it?
I remember a quote, though, from former WVU coach Bob Huggins though. After his team lost to Kansas in the Big 12 tournament in 2022, the Mountaineers sat at 16-17. It was after the NIT requirements of a .500 record or better had been dropped.
“We’ve got more games to play,” Huggins said. “We’ll get home and have them rest for a day, or so, and we’ll get back at it and get ready to bring home a trophy. That’s what we do. That’s what we set our goals for every year. It’s obviously not going to be the one that we wanted, but it’s going to be a trophy that is well worth bringing home.”
That attitude is about what Crean spoke. Also, as he mentioned, it’s a chance for development.
Yet you can’t paint with such a broad stroke anymore. The portal opened on Monday, a day after Selection Sunday. Ole Miss coach Chris Beard and St. John’s coach Rick Pitino pointed to “timing” and the desire to jump into recruiting. Heck, some of their players, like hundreds elsewhere, may go portaling. Teams and players are shopping now. Already there are reports like “Alabama has landed Pepperdine transfer Houston Mallette.” (WVU’s new coach will be behind on shopping.)
Also, while West Virginia has good memories from NITs of the past (the Mountaineers won the title in 2007 in John Beilein’s final season in Morgantown), Huggins’ team in 2022 wasn’t invited and, in fact, then-AD Shane Lyons told The Dominion Post, “The decision was made not to participate in any other postseason games unless we get invited to the NIT.”
So, there was no CBI (College Basketball Invitational) for WVU. The school is not above turning down an invitation. In that case it’s probably because the school paid a total of $80,000 to host two games in that tournament in 2019 – and lost in the second round to Coastal Carolina in Morgantown. West Virginia, in fact, allowed its most points at home in program history, topping 107 by Notre Dame in 1971.
So, like most things in life, you take it case by case. If you have a young team that’s going to stick together (yet who knows these days, right?), yes, go for it. Play in the NIT and other post-season tournaments.
But in the NFL, you need three accrued seasons to be a free agent. In Major League Baseball, it takes six. In college basketball, players are always free agents now.
And it’s going to continue to affect more than post-season tournaments.
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Mitch Vingle covered sports in West Virginia for 38 years. Follow Mitch on Twitter at @MitchVingle and be sure to check out the rest of Wheelhouse Creative’s website for your marketing and advertising needs. If interested, call us at 304-905-6005.