NEW YORK (AP) -There’s going to be more March basketball.
The producer of some early-season tournaments announced Wednesday it will start a 16-team postseason event that will augment the NCAA and NIT.
The College Basketball Invitational will be staged this March by The Gazelle Group, based in Princeton, N.J., runs the 2K Sports College Hoop Classic that benefits Coaches vs. Cancer and the O’Reilly Auto Parts CBE Classic.
The NCAA invites 65 teams to its tournament and the National Invitation Tournament, which started in 1938, a year before the NCAA, selects another 32. The NIT reduced its field last season from 40.
The NCAA has owned the NIT since 2005 as part of a settlement that ended a 4-year legal fight between the parties.
The teams will be invited along the same criteria used by the NCAA and NIT – overall and conference records and late-season play.
Four geographic brackets will be balanced competitively. Television arrangements will be announced as they are confirmed.
It will be a single-elimination tournament through the first two rounds and the semifinals, all played at campus sites. The Championship Series will be a best-of-three with the higher-seeded team playing at home in the first game and, if necessary, the third.
The first round is scheduled for March 18-19. The Championship Series will be March 31, April 2 and April 4.
The NCAA’s Final Four is April 5 and 7 in San Antonio. The NIT semifinals and finals are April 1 and 3 at Madison Square Garden in New York.
A third tournament, sponsored by the Collegiate Commissioners Association, was held in 1974. It was won by Indiana.
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