The NIT selection process
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The NIT selection process

After looking at the NIT support for this year, I have determined that it came about in one of two ways. First let’s look at the committee members:

Dean Smith – No introduction needed Gene Keady – 25 years as Purdue coach Reggie Minton – Coach for 30 years in Air Force and Dartmouth CM Newton – Committee Chairman, 50+ years as player and manager coach Don Devoe – Most Famous Coach in Tennessee and in his last years in the Navy Jack Powers: graduated from Manhattan in 1958, also returned to coaching in Manhattan Carroll Williams: coach and AD in Santa Clara for 30 years before retiring in 2000 Rudy Dovalos: retired athletic director of New Mexico

Scenario 1

All 8 committee members are in the room with a moderator to help move things along.

Moderator: OK gentleman, the NCAA field is ready and we only have a few hours to get our 32-team field sat down and seeded. I think the best place to start is with the last teams left out of the NCAA field.

Moderator: Team #1 Drexel University

Carroll Williams: What is a Drexel?

Gene Keady: Is that one of those teams that just got added to the Big East? I was against it.

Moderator: Gene, first you trained in the Big 10, second Drexel is in the CAA

Dean Smith: No way they’re from the ACC, I’m the ACC, I would never let them in.

Moderator: I didn’t say ACC, I said CAA

John Powers: Can someone pass the prune juice?

Reggie Minton: I thought you had to be Division 1 to get into this tournament…

Moderator: They are Division 1 – you must be thinking about the NAIA

Don Devoe: I think we played them once when I was in the Navy in the late ’90s. They beat us quite a bit, but again they offer scholarships. It really wasn’t fair play.

Rudy Dovalos: Yeah, now that I think about it, I remember when they beat Memphis in the first round of the NCAA tournament in the Pit when I was in New Mexico. They had some really nasty fans.

Dean Smith: Speaking of nasty fans, Duke has the worst.

Gene Keady: Yours aren’t princes either, Dean.

Moderator: Gentleman, can we get back on topic?

Moderator: CM what do you think of Drexel?

CM Newton: Depends.

Moderator: Depends on what?

CM Newton: No, I need a new pair of Depends, Coach Minton tapped me on the shoulder and I started and messed up my current pair.

Moderator: I thought we all agreed that we would not do that to each other, we have very little time right now, we have to finish this. Here on the sheet it says that Drexel won Syracuse.

Rudy Dovalos: Is that young man Jim Boeheim still in Syracuse? He has a real future there, a handsome boy too.

John Powers: I remember back in 1970 when we almost made the NIT. 1970 was a very good year.

The entire room nods and swaps stories about 1970.

Dean Smith: Nobody cares about the NIT anyway, why don’t we hand out the names of the teams we know, then pull numbers out of the hat for the rest and go watch “Murder She Wrote”?

The entire room nods once more in agreement. The moderator throws his papers into the air and leaves. This is how the NIT 2007 section was born.

scenario 2

After hours of heated intelligent discussions between the 8 members of the committee, a key is produced that they are extremely proud of. Syracuse is #1 in the North, Drexel is #1 in the East, the state of Florida is #1 in the South, and the state of Missouri is #1 in the West.

On his way to the ESPNU studios for the selection show, CM Newton is grabbed in the hallway by Dean Smith and the following conversation takes place:

Dean Smith: Do you remember over the years how we used to make fun of the media that they would buy anything we said and they never had an independent thought among all of them?

CM Newton: Yeah, we had that conversation all the time.

Dean Smith: OK, I have a bet: $1 says we can pull names out of a hat for this tournament, and yet we’ll all be hailed as geniuses and given credit for doing hard work… it’s not like no one would care. about the NIT anyway.

CM Newton: Come on, even the media can’t be that stupid. I’ll take that bet.

CM Newton paid Dean Smith $1 today and now you know how the 2007 NIT leg was born.

(originally published in 2007)

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