NIT 2012 Bracket: Stanford Is Hot Enough to Win It All

It didn't look this way until the last several weeks, but this could be the year for Stanford to win it all. In the NIT, that is.

The Cardinal's season has been nothing if not up-and-down, but the team is picking the perfect time to string together a run under former Duke assistant Johnny Dawkins.

Wednesday's 84-56 shellacking of Nevada in the NIT quarterfinals proved it.

"The most important thing is to have a successful run," Dawkins told the Associated Press after the game. "We want to be champions and we still have that chance. We want to put up a banner in Maples Pavilion."

Good for Dawkins for not buying into popular opinion that the NIT stands for the Nobody's Interested Tournament, or that winning this tournament isn't just as important as winning any other. Why wouldn't it be? Why shouldn't Stanford be eager to solidify itself as a team that should've been included in the field of 68 in this year's Big Dance?

Stanford triumphed over a Nevada team that had won six of its last seven and had entered the contest with just six losses on its record, perhaps proving that the Pac-12 wasn't quite as feeble this year as it was made out to be.

Since a three-game tear in January that featured wins over Oregon State, Utah and Colorado, Stanford had struggled to put together a convincing run, which is never a good sign in the eyes of the NCAA selection committee. The Cardinal dropped three straight following that mini-winning streak, and after that, inconsistencies plagued the team—until now.

In the month of March, Stanford has won five of six. It has scored 84 points or more in three of those five wins, and its offense has gotten hotter and hotter in each of its NIT matchups.

Never was that more evident than against the Wolf Pack on Wednesday, when Stanford won by a 28-point margin, perhaps its most impressive victory since a quadruple-overtime win over Oregon State on January 7. And there is never a better time to be hot than in the final tournament of the season.

Now, the only thing standing in between Stanford and a trip to the finals is UMass. Though the Minutemen rank 23rd in the NCAA in points per game (76.8) and 13th overall in rebounds per game (39.3), they've beaten just one ranked team this year, and they have yet to pull off a truly dominating victory in the NIT. They squeaked by Mississippi State in two overtimes in the first round, needed a huge three-pointer from Chaz Williams in the final 2.5 minutes of a win over Seton Hall and notched a 72-70 win over Drexel to advance to the semifinals.

It's true that a win is a win, but at this point, there seems to be very little that can halt Stanford's momentum, and the Cardinal have the perfect opportunity to prove it at Madison Square Garden next week.