Shortly after the NCAA Tournament field was announced Sunday night, the NIT announced its field.
As expected, three Big East teams are in the NIT — Georgetown, Notre Dame and Providence.
Also selected for the NIT were Davidson and star guard Stephen Curry, and Kentucky, which had played in the past 17 consecutive NCAA tournaments.
Seton Hall, which finished 17-15, including one victory over a Division I-AA program, is done for the season unless it winds up in one of these other third-rate postseason tournaments. Cincinnati, once a potential NCAA bubble team, is also out.
“If you take two or three teams in the NIT, you gotta start talking about Seton Hall,” Pirates coach Bobby Gonzalez said after his team lost to Syracuse in the Big East Tournament. “I think we deserve it. We won 17 games and we won eight league games this year in this league.”
Looks like the Pirates will have to look ahead to next year, when the future should be bright with the additions of transfers Herb Pope, Keon Lawrence and Jeff Robinson and 6-11 Melvyn Oliver, plus whatever commitments they get this spring.
Unfortunately, Paul Gause won’t get a chance to break Dan Calandrillo’s all-time steals leader, but he certainly enjoyed a terrific career.
A88BLUE / March 15, 2009
How the heck do they pick georgetown over the Hall?? I mean apart from the fact that they have a higher profile program………cant say they had a better season.
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Adam Zagoria / March 16, 2009
Georgetown beat UConn, Memphis, Syracuse and Villanova and has the same number of D-1 wins (16) as Seton Hall.
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A88BLUE / March 16, 2009
All those wins were early in the season, they have completely fallen off the map since, we were ranked higher in the Big East and we actually won a game in the Conference Tournament…….oh and we kinda beat them head-to-head!
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Stealth421 / March 16, 2009
Zags I’m a Hall fan but you are right here. I mean being a Hall die hard, like A88BLUE, you can assuredly make a case for the hall. But yet, If you balnked out the names, and gave the resume to a nuetral, knowledgable b-ball fan, Georgetown deserves to be in the NIT over us.
Being objective, Georgetown all day, but if you made a case for Seton Hall, you can;t be totally ridiculed.
I mean Zags, I stated that I agree with you. But listen to GONZO’S interview on WFAN with Joe and Evan. The case for The Hall isn’t completely without merit.
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