the winner of the losers

You are devastated. Your team’s hard work all year long didn’t pay off. Your team just wasn’t good enough to make the cut. This is what members of teams like Saint Mary’s and Penn State were experiencing after learning that they had just missed being in the NCAA tournament, an experience that may come only once in a lifetime. But don’t get too down on yourselves, guys. There is a consolation prize in all this chaos. You get to be frontrunners in the NIT tournament, which includes the best 40 teams to not make the NCAA tournament. But winning the event at Madison Square Garden and proclaiming yourself the best non-NCAA tourney team is not guaranteed. There are schools like Notre Dame that had a great start to the regular season (they began 12-3) and then plummeted off the radar (they finished 6-11), who are just happy to be in the postseason. Notre Dame actually won in the first 3 rounds of the NIT before losing to Penn State. Many experts thought that St. Mary’s should be in the NCAA tournament. They showed their anger over missing the Big Dance by winning their first two NIT games before losing in the quarterfinal to San Diego State. In the end, Penn State beat another Notre Dame- like team in Baylor to win the championship game. They didn’t make it to the main attraction, where the 65 best teams face off to decide who the best team in the country is. But the Nittany Lions did get to prove that they were the winner of the losers.