The NITs announced their 32-team arena on Sunday night, highlighted by the first four teams drawn out of the NCAA Tournament bracket: Dayton, Oklahoma, SMU and Texas A&M.
Those four teams earned four 1-seeds in the NIT bracket with Dayton—which was bounced off NCAA territory when Atlantic 10 rival Richmond won the conference tournament—leading the way. In their opening game of the tournament, the Flyers face Toledo, the regular-season champion of the Mid-American Conference.
This is the program's 27th attendance at NIT, the highest of any school in the region.
On the other side of the bracket is SMU, which will open with regular-season champion Nichols of Southland. Oklahoma face Missouri State, while Texas A&M was drawn against Alcorn State.
The most interesting first-round matchup pits 3-seeded Florida against MAAC regular-season champion Iona. The Gators lost coach Mike White to fellow SEC event Georgia, while Rick Pitino and Iona were stunned at the MAAC tournament by a 9-seeded rider.
Intrastate battles are also scattered across the bracket, with Dayton versus Toledo, Vanderbilt versus Belmont, Xavier versus Cleveland State and North Texas versus Texas State, all featuring in-state rivals.
The NITs are scheduled to begin with first round of action on Tuesday and Wednesday, and second round of games on March 19-20. The semi-finals and final are once again on March 29 and March 31 at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Memphis won last year's NIT by defeating Mississippi State in the championship game 77–64.