Well, Auburn at least made one tournament: the NIT.
Congrats to the Barners for having something to do in the post-season outside of firing coaches for the first time in the 2025-2026 athletic season. Way to go, buddy.
Anyway, as a conversation point for today…how do you feel about something like the NIT? Is it an insult to play, or at least some additional time for your decent team to continue playing ball? I see it as kind of like the bowl games (non CFP) that it can be entertaining and you can win something, but we’re not a program that would hang its hats on owning a “Pop Tarts Bowl” trophy nowadays, and something tells me that only Auburn would find a way to win the NIT and then claim they were National Champions in theory using this as proof from such a pyrrhic victory.
People would laugh at the thought, but we know Auburn does things like this and it seems they don’t really care what our thoughts are on the matter.
What are your thoughts?
At least they are accepting a bid unlike some football program that believes they are entitled to a playoff berth and decides a bowl bid is beneath them.
Once the NCAA field went to 64 teams, the NIT became irrelevant. Back when I was a young pup, the NIT had a good bit of clout. Today it’s simply programming fodder for the WWL.
As a Georgia basketball fan I was happier having additional games to attend or watch those years we were not going to the NCAA tournament. I really didn’t care about watching NIT games not involving UGA.
For a team with promising freshman such as us in 2024 additional games were valuable.
Correct – as a longtime Georgia basketball fan, it was nice to have something to fall back on…. One of Fox’s teams really should have been in the Dance and got to the NIT semis, which was really nice!
I watched when Georgia played in it. I rarely watch CBB otherwise. The opening rounds of March Madness are usually interesting.
The what?
“Congrats to the Barners for having something to do in the post-season outside of firing coaches..” – That’s gold Jerry. GOLD!
Bruce Pearl blew about AU every time he got air time. It was sickening.
“Bruce Pearl blew about AU” and provided commentary…
With all the transfer chaos, it seems like teams don’t want to long con their development anymore and does the NIT pay for itself or eat into NIL monies?
I sure as hell had fun at the NIT in Columbus a couple seasons ago.
I’m all for the NIT, and it’s on-campus format. Give me a bunch of middling-to-good teams that actually give a shit, and play entertaining basketball.
I got into a Twitter tiff with former Xavier basketball star Kenny Frease when Georgia played them in the NIT two years ago. That was probably the first time Georgia basketball had made me feel anything since Tre Thompkins and Travis Leslie left. I guess it just depends on where your program stands and the expectations.
Auburn probably should fire their basketball coach, promoting a retiring coaches son to a head coaching role is stupid even by Auburn standards.