A group that organized some of these early season tournaments announced yesterday a plan to have another 16-team tournament in addition to the NCAA and NIT. "The College Basketball Invitational will be staged this March by The Gazelle Group, which is based in Princeton, N.J., and runs the 2K Sports College Hoop Classic that benefits Coaches vs. Cancer and the O'Reilly Auto Parts CBE Classic."This is about as good an idea as adding 4 more bowl games before Christmas so that all the .500 teams can be "rewarded" for a "good" season.
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"The CBI intends to compete with the NIT for teams that did not make the NCAA's field of 65.
"It would be unfair for us to wait, so we're going to let the NCAA pick their field and then we'll invite the 66th team, it wouldn't be fair not to," Gazelle Group president Rick Giles said Wednesday night. "One of the big things is giving teams a choice. Competition is good and makes everything better. To date there hasn't been a choice and we'll make this a viable choice.""
I love college hoops but with the NCAA tournament going on at the same time, I really see no purpose for a riveting SE Missouri State (16-16) vs Maryland Eastern Shore (16-16) opening round tilt in a third tournament with 4 people watching.
Maybe we should just throw all Div III, Div II and left over DI teams into one massive tournament. Now that I'd be interested in. Sort of.
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