Today at 6 p.m. ET, the field for the 2025 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament will be announced, officially bringing the joy of March Madness to 68 schools.
At 9:30 p.m., the National Invitation Tournament will reveal its bracket – one chock full of teams bitterly disappointed that they failed to make the Big Dance.
There is no confusion about the hierarchy of postseason tourneys in modern college hoops: if you aren’t in the competition that ultimately crowns a national champion, every matchup is a consolation game.
Of course, there was a time when the NIT was the premiere event in amateur basketball, playing all its games at Madison Square Garden in New York with the tourney winner considered America’s top collegiate team for the season. It began in 1938, predating the NCAA tourney by a year.
But the competition sponsored by the sport’s governing body became the alpha by the 1960s, and by 1969 the NCAA Tournament was clearly the main event of collegiate basketball, featuring 25 participants.
The NIT, on the other hand, had just 16 schools in its field.
Yet, while the senior tournament was no longer the star attraction, it still carried a measure of prestige. And in 1970, the Marquette Warriors actually turned down an NCAA bid in favor of an NIT berth.
Marquette (23-3) was ranked No. 8 in the Associated Press poll when the 1969-70 regular season ended, and on February 24, 1970, the school was one of 10 programs to receive at-large bids to the NCAA Tournament.
The others were Jacksonville, Notre Dame, St. Bonaventure, New Mexico State, Houston, Utah State, Villanova, Niagara and Long Beach State. Fifteen conference champions earned automatic bids.
However, the NCAA Selection Committee placed Marquette in the Midwest Regional, which was being played in Fort Worth, Texas. Warrior coach Al McGuire declined the invite because he thought his team deserved to play closer to home in the Mideast Regional, contested in Dayton, Ohio. They were the third highest-ranked independent school named to the field.
“I am very disappointed,” McGuire told AP. “Our heart was set on going to the NCAA.”
McGuire said he talked to NCAA officials and told them Marquette deserved the Mideast Region berth regardless of whether teams were picked based on strength of schedule, records or rankings.
“We belong in Dayton, Ohio,” McGuire said. “That’s all there is to it. I can’t see their thinking.”
Tom Scott, Davidson athletic director and chairman of the NCAA Selection Committee, said he was sorry Marquette decided to opt out.
“Our selection committee ranks the teams in each region and Marquette was third in the Mideast, behind both Notre Dame and Jacksonville,” Scott explained in a United Press International story. “We have only two at-large berths in the Mideast and so the third team is the ‘swing’ team – the team we can, according to the (rule book), move to another regional.
“Our purpose is to select the 10 independent teams we consider the best in the country and we certainly feel Marquette is one of those teams.”
Based on Scott’s logic the decision made perfect sense, but McGuire wasn’t having it. His team had been in the Mideast Regional the previous two seasons, and his 1969-70 squad had a better record than either of those teams.
“I’m disgusted,” he said. “We take basketball seriously here. Maybe it was something between me and the committee … I don’t know. They speak out of both sides of their mouth. First, they speak about schedules, then records. We can’t do any better than we did. What do we have to do – 23-0?”
The Warriors’ leading scorer – junior guard Dean Meminger – backed his coach.
“You must stand up against the establishment,” Meminger said in a February 25 UPI article. “You can’t let people walk over you. What the committee did was a total contradiction.
“My heart was set on going to the NCAA because I wanted to play against the best.”
While Dayton was quickly named as Marquette’s replacement in the NCAA Tourney, the Warriors just as quickly accepted an NIT bid.
McGuire’s team opened with an 83-63 victory over Utah.
“There is a certain electricity about the NIT,” McGuire told Newsday’s George Usher. “It turns New York into a small town – a Madison, Wisconsin – but a lot of so-called dreams are put in the background. I’m just tickled pink the NIT is alive and took us in.”
Marquette thumped LSU (and “Pistol Pete” Maravich), 101-79, in the semi-finals, limiting Maravich to 20 points – 27 points below his average.
And the Warriors claimed the NIT Championship with a 65-53 win over St. John’s on March 21, their twelfth consecutive victory.
“I felt we could win the NCAA, but I’m happy to win any championship,” McGuire said. “I’ve never won one anywhere.”
The same night of the NIT finals, the UCLA Bruins claimed their fourth consecutive national championship with an 80-69 victory over Jacksonville. The Dolphins, by the way, won the Mideast Regional.
The 1969-70 season was the last time an NCAA Tournament invitee had the option of trading down to the NIT. Starting with the 1970-71 campaign, any school receiving an NCAA bid was required to accept it.
Incidentally, Marquette was selected as an at-large team in the 1977 NCAA Tournament and – you guessed it – sent to the Midwest Regional.
In McGuire’s last game before retiring, the Warriors defeated North Carolina, 67-59, to claim his only national championship and – to date – the school’s lone NCAA men’s basketball crown.