First off, thanks to the commenter who pointed out that power conference schools do occasionally accept bids to the CBI. It's not often, but it does happen. I'll project them in for now.
These will be my last CBI/CIT predictions, as we get deep into March, some teams will accept bids very early in the process. Once again, the reason I like doing these are to provide a snapshot of the types of teams in line to play these events, and the type of opponent you'll run into. For the small schools, this can be a moderate-to-big deal, just getting into these events. So I like to give a general idea of where the bubble for these events lie.
Many teams turn down bids to these tournaments. I DO NOT make attempts to predict which teams will turn down these bids in the projections below. REPEAT. I DO NOT make attempts to predict which teams will turn down bids. Therefore, if I include a team that you think isn't playing in these tournaments...that's OK. I'm not saying they would accept a bid. Further, if you see a team listed below, don't take it as gospel and think they'd automatically accept a bid if offered. Many don't. I don't know the answer, and it's very likely you don't either (unless you're well-connected within an athletic department, in which case you obviously have better access to info than me).
With that out of the way....let's have fun. Let's start with the CBI, which accepts high-majors and low-majors alike, charge more per game hosted than the CIT, and seems to be more generally recognized by the public.
1) The CBI may take teams under .500 overall. I won't project any teams under .500 in the CBI field this year, but that's because of the lack of teams with good enough resumes to overcome that. The one gigantic exception could be Kansas St if they fall into the CBI's lap. I don't think Michigan, Florida, or South Carolina, among others (even Fresno St, over .500 in the Mountain West!), would overcome it.
2) Among the power 6 conferences, after accounting for the NIT, I see 5 teams above .500 left: TCU, Florida St, Vanderbilt, Tennessee, Washington. Let's project all 5 in the CBI and see what happens.
3) I'm going to fill out the other 11 spots with teams I feel are postseason invite locks. These are generally teams with high finishes in conference and/or high profile teams in upper-major conferences:
Pepperdine (4th place in the WCC behind the Big 3)
Indiana St (3rd place in the MVC)
St Bonaventure (.500 in the A-10 right now)
Kent St (currently battling for the MAC title)
Utah St (somehow just 1 game back in the Mountain West!)
Georgia St (in Sun Belt contention, Top 100 RPI)
High Point (2nd in the Big South, Top 100 RPI)
Sam Houston St (2nd in the Southland currently)
Eastern Washington (in Big Sky contention, Top 100 RPI)
Western Kentucky (led CUSA for awhile)
Cleveland St (just lost out on the Horizon title)
The matchups might look like:
West: Eastern Washington (18-8) at Pepperdine (16-12), Utah St (17-10) at Washington (15-13)
South: Sam Houston St (18-6) at TCU (17-12), Georgia St (19-9) at Florida St (15-15)
Midwest: Western Kentucky (16-10) at Vanderbilt (16-12), Kent St (18-10) at Indiana St (14-15)
East: Cleveland St (15-13) at Tennessee (14-14), High Point (19-9) at St Bonaventure (15-12)
Now to the CIT. You must be .500 overall to make this field, but non D1 wins count towards the .500 total (so you'll see records below that are under .500, those teams are under .500 against D1 teams but at least .500 against all teams combined). As far as general criteria, there's usually enough rejections that a majority, but not all, teams above .500 will get an invite. The teams who finish low in their conference and right around .500 might be at a disadvantage, but otherwise you've got a fighting chance at this tournament.
Mock matchups:
Rider (21-10) at Northeastern (20-11)
Vermont (16-12) at Manhattan (16-13)
Akron (17-11) at Stony Brook (19-10)
Eastern Kentucky (17-10) at Evansville (18-11)
Oakland (14-15) at Western Michigan (16-11)
Hofstra (19-12) at Radford (18-10)
Tennessee-Martin (16-11) at FGCU (18-9)
Lehigh (15-13) at LaSalle (15-14)
Belmont (18-10) at UAB (15-13)
Norfolk St (16-11) at James Madison (19-12)
UNC Wilmington (16-12) at Chattanooga (20-9)
Coastal Carolina (17-9) at Mercer (15-14)
San Diego (14-15) at UC-Irvine (15-11)
UCSB (14-12) at UNLV (15-13)
Montana (15-11) at North Dakota St (19-9)
Louisiana-Monroe (15-10) at Oral Roberts (15-13)
Toughest cuts, in no particular order (21 cuts in all):
Portland, Eastern Michigan, Loyola(Chi), Hawaii, Middle Tennessee, Lafayette, Louisiana-Lafayette, Texas-Arlington, Monmouth, Eastern Illinois, Winthrop, Gardner-Webb, Robert Morris, Bryant, Northern Arizona, Northwestern St, New Hampshire, USC Upstate, Maryland-Eastern Shore, NJIT, Canisius
With 48 CBI/CIT teams listed above, I would expect about 20 to decline bids. So in reality, the teams listed above are the bubble teams that will make it. If your team isn't mentioned, I think you have an uphill climb to get a postseason invite.
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