Expanded NIT field could clear a path for Rebels

Steve Addy

Thursday, Feb. 7, 2002 | 10:36 a.m.

The Rebels' chances of earning an NIT postseason bid just improved by 25 percent, and they didn't have to make one basket.

Their foremost aspiration, long shot or not, is to claim an NCAA Tournament berth by winning the Mountain West tournament March 7-9 at the Thomas & Mack Center. But if they fail at that, they could benefit from the NIT's decision to expand this year's field from 32 to 40 teams.

NIT executive director John J. Powers said the one-year experiment is a response to coaches, ADs and conference commissioners who believed worthy teams were being overlooked in the 32-team format.

The expansion means that 105 of 320 Division I clubs will receive postseason bids, 65 to the NCAA Tournament. With their 11-8 record, favorable schedule and national profile, the Rebels would likely draw NIT interest even with 15 or 16 wins.

But first things first, coach Charlie Spoonhour said.

"Obviously, our main goal is to win the Mountain West tournament and get into the NCAAs," he said from a recruiting trip in Kansas. "But (the NIT expansion) is good, because it gives our program an additional opportunity to get to postseason play, which we would like.

"This will help programs across the country. The last few years, there were some teams that did well in conference play and were deserving, but got excluded because of a numbers situation."

Powers said the extra slots will help reward mid-major and lower Division I teams, not necessarily to hand out more berths to lower-finishing teams from power conferences.

He pointed to St. Francis (N.Y.), which won the Northeast Conference regular season and was 18-11 last season, but lost the conference tournament final and sat out the postseason. Valparaiso suffered the same fate after winning the Mid-Continent regular season.

"That is the type of group we're looking at with expansion in mind," Powers said. "The committee feels teams that had outstanding regular seasons should be rewarded in some manner. Now it will be more open to everybody, especially (smaller) conferences. They will be more a part of the formula than in the past."

St. Francis coach Ron Ganulin, a former UNLV assistant, said, "It does give coaches at schools our size something else to be hopeful about in case you win your conference (regular season) and stub your toe (in the conference tournament)."

The three-year-old Mountain West is in a gray area among conferences. It ranks seventh in the power ratings, far better than the Northeast and Mid-Continent, but lacks the pedigree and influence of the so-called Big Six conferences (ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10 and SEC).

The MWC has had two NIT teams in the last two previous seasons. Last year, New Mexico won the first two rounds while Utah lost its opener. In 2000, BYU won two games, New Mexico one.

UNLV has played in the NIT five times, getting to the semifinals in 1980 when the field expanded from 24 teams to 32. In the Rebels' most recent appearance, they lost their opener at Nebraska in 1999.

This year's field will be chosen Sunday, March 10, after the NCAA bracket is announced. Eight preliminary games will be held March 12 at campus sites, with the winners advancing to the first round, which ends March 15. The second round is March 18-19, the third round March 20-22 and the semifinals in New York are March 26. The championship is March 28.

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