The 2024 National Invitation Tournament was a single-elimination tournament of 32 NCAA Division I men's college basketball teams not selected to participate in the 2024 NCAA tournament. The tournament began on March 19 and ended on April 4. The first three rounds were played on campuses, with the semifinal and championship final played at Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Indiana.[1]
Teams and pairings for the 2024 NIT were released by the NIT Committee on Sunday, March 17, 2024. Thirty–two teams qualified for the NIT, including both automatic qualifiers and at-large selections. In 2023, The North Texas Mean Green won the NIT championship.
In a change from previous tournaments, teams which had the best regular-season record in their conference but failed to win their conference tournament no longer automatically qualified for the NIT.[2] Instead, the top two teams (based on NET ranking) from six major conferences (ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC) not selected for the NCAA tournament received automatic bids, regardless of their win-loss records. These 12 teams also were given the opportunity to host first-round games.[2] If a team declined an automatic bid, it was offered to the team with the next best NET ranking in the declining team's conference. Despite this new automatic qualification criterion, only one automatic qualifier from the Pac-12 accepted a 2024 NIT bid, meaning only 11 automatic bids were awarded.
The NET rankings through games of March 17, 2024, of non-NCAA tournament teams from automatically qualifying conferences are listed below.[3] Team in bold accepted a bid, teams in italics were eligible for an automatic bid, but declined.
The following teams were awarded at-large bids.
† Team was one of the first four out of the NCAA tournament and entitled to deference from the NIT Committee in determining home-court advantage for first-round games.[2][4]
The following schools declined to play in the 2024 NIT:
The 32-team bracket was announced at 9:30 p.m. EDT on ESPN2.
ESPN, Inc. has exclusive rights to all of the NIT games. It will telecast every game across ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN3 and ESPN+. Westwood One has exclusive radio rights to the semifinals and the championship.