NIT 2015: Updated Format, Latest Bracketology Predictions and Insight

For those teams that can't get a bid to the NCAA tournament, the National Invitation Tournament serves as a nice consolation prize.

While it obviously doesn't carry the same sense of pride as the Big Dance, the tournament represents a chance for teams to keep competing as well as earn some accolades in the postseason. It's especially helpful for younger squads to develop and improve for the future.

Meanwhile, smaller schools can now get into the field if they win their conference's regular-season title without winning the tournament. This provides more exposure to top teams and a chance to prove they belong.

Another format change came this year regarding the seeding. Since the NCAA tournament selection committee announces the "last four out" of its own field, those teams will automatically become the No. 1 seeds in the NIT.

This ensures the teams with the best profiles get the most respect when the brackets come out. There are probably still a number of changes to be made, but here is a look at a prediction for teams likely to get a bid to the NIT.

Seeds	Teams
1	Texas A&M	Miami (FL)	Illinois	Tulsa
2	Tulsa	Murray State	UCLA	Stanford
3	Old Dominion	Richmond	Pittsburgh	Green Bay
4	Rhode Island	Alabama	George Washington	Connecticut
5	Oregon State	Iona	Yale	Buffalo
6	Arizona State	Minnesota	UTEP	Illinois State
7	Vanderbilt	Saint Mary's	Wyoming	William & Mary
8	South Dakota St.	Bucknell	St. Francis Brooklyn	Charleston Southern

The biggest debate for the NIT bracket will be the teams that just missed the NCAA tournament.

Although things can change, teams like Miami, Texas A&M and others just don't have the resume to get in at the moment between a lack of quality wins or too many bad losses.

There might be some debate over Tulsa based on the way it played in the AAC, but considering the only notable wins both came against Temple while a loss to Oral Roberts is still on the resume, this squad might need to win its conference tournament just to get in.

However, the biggest argument will be surrounding Murray State. The Racers went undefeated throughout the conference regular season before losing in the Ohio Valley Conference final. As a result, plenty of people are hoping they can get in, like Gary Parrish of CBS Sports:

Head coach Steve Prohm even took to Sporting News to state his own case, comparing his squad to Ohio State football:

"

The eye-test: You’ve got to sit down at some point and say, “Neutral floor, who are you taking?” I think a lot of people would lean toward Murray. We can’t just look solely or mainly at numbers. If football did that, would Ohio State have had an opportunity to win a national championship, and would anyone know the name Cardale Jones?

"

Unfortunately, the numbers simply don't lie. You can question how easy it is to schedule tough games as Murray State, but the two best teams it played this year based on RPI were Xavier and Valparaiso. One was a 27-point loss while the other was a 35-point loss.

Without many quality wins to counter these defeats, the Racers will instead be a top contender in the NIT.

Another small school to watch out for in the NIT is Green Bay, which lost its Horizon League final to Valparaiso. With star guard Keifer Sykes leading the way, this is another program people are rooting for, like Kami Mattioli of Sporting News:

Add these intriguing programs to the numerous power-conference squads that have struggled at times this year, and this should be an exciting tournament to watch.

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