CBI not good enough for 17-16 Iowa? Really?

INDIANAPOLIS - Maybe Gary Barta has good reasons when he says he believes the Iowa men's basketball team will get an invitation to the National Invitation Tournament Sunday night.

It would seem a 17-16 Hawkeyes team that absorbed a 92-75 beatdown from Michigan State Friday in the Big Ten tournament quarterfinals wouldn't have a great chance to make the NIT cut. The NIT basically takes the best remaining at-large teams that don't make the NCAA tourney. But stranger things have happened.

If Iowa doesn't get an NIT bid, however, Iowa athletics director Barta is doing the team and its fans a disservice by not accepting a spot in the 16-team College Basketball Invitational. Especially since it would mean anywhere from one to five more home games.

Much of the CBI is televised by Mark Cuban's HDNet. The Big Ten may not particularly want to help provide programming for a sort-of rival network of the Big Ten Network. But Barta and the league insist there is no formal policy against barring its members from playing in the event.

Ray Cella of The Gazelle Group in New Jersey, which produces the CBI, told me the same thing Thursday.

OK, fine. But the CBI and the NCAA-owned NIT are twin brothers of different mothers. The NIT dates to 1938 and the CBI to 1998, but neither carries overwhelming prestige or significance these days. From top to bottom, the NIT has better teams than the CBI. But not by enough to matter.

Both tourneys are, however, chances to compete against teams of similar success and talent from around the nation.

In 2010, the NIT champion was Dayton and the CBI winner was Virginia Commonwealth. Which left a greater impression the following season? Uh, that would be NCAA Final Four-participant VCU.

Wichita State won last year's NIT, while Creighton was the CBI runner-up to Oregon. Wichita State was the Missouri Valley's regular-season champ this year, Creighton the Valley's tournament-titlist.

Earlier this week, the Omaha World-Herald had a story headlined “CBI helped pave way for CU's run to NCAAs.” Creighton played seven CBI games, five in Omaha.

Said Bluejays Coach Greg McDermott: “Any time you have an opportunity to win a championship, regardless of whether it was in the CBI or some other tournament, it helps your program develop.”

But the CBI is beneath Iowa and the Big Ten? Does Creighton, which averaged 16,664 fans per home game, has been nationally ranked for most of this season, and beat the Hawkeyes by 23 points last November, have lower standards? Hardly.

“On Sunday they'll name the top 100 teams, between the NCAA and the NIT,” Barta said. “And that's been our focus, that we want to be one of the top 100 teams.

“I don't speak for every athletic director in the Big Ten and Big 12 and SEC (none of which has sent a team to the CBI), but my thoughts are shared by most programs in the country, or at least some BCS schools. That is, we want to be one of the top programs in the country. ... At some point you say this is where you're going to draw the line.”

If the Hawkeyes don't get an NIT bid and fly off to play an Arizona or Iona (Iowa-Iona?), their season is over. Iowa's players - remember them? - say they'd would prefer more games.

“It would mean a lot,” Iowa senior Matt Gatens said about the chance for a postseason tourney. “You'd have the chance to fight on for something, put a banner up in Carver.”

“Guys like Matt haven't had the chance to play in the postseason,” sophomore Hawkeye Devyn Marble said. “Of course we want to play for them.”

“Players never want to stop playing, coaches never want to stop coaching,” Barta said. “But at some point you have to draw the line.”

It's been four years since the NIT took a team that was only one game over .500. Maybe Iowa breaks that streak.

“I'm confident we'll get the chance to play in the NIT,” Barta said. “If not, you turn the page.”

Not playing in a CBI would be a million miles from tragic. But as Creighton and Virginia Commonwealth can tell you, it could have been fun. And useful.