If you look at the NCAA Tournament Bracket, you'll see that the University of North Carolina Tarheels are a number two seed. The West Virginia Mountaineers are a number five seed. The Minnesota Golden Gophers beat both of those teams in Puerto Rico in a tournament earlier in the season.
Now, it's been determined that the Gophers aren't even one of the best 96 100 college basketball teams in the country.
We knew that the Gophers weren't going to make the 2011 NCAA Tournament, but it seemed that they had a pretty good chance of making it into the 2011 National Invitation Tournament field of 32. Well, the NIT bracket has just been released. . .and the Gophers aren't a part of that, either.
According to Marcus R. Fuller of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the Gophers won't be accepting a potential bid to the College Basketball Invitational tournament, either.
I just got a text from a Gophers team spokesman. I asked if what happens with no NIT bid. He said, "the season is over."
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This really just underscores what a disaster the 2010-11 season turned into for the Minnesota Golden Gophers. They started the year with the tournament victory in Puerto Rico that I mentioned earlier, peaked with them winding up being ranked in the top 15 teams in the country. . .and now they won't even be playing in the CBI, which is basically the "participation ribbon" of the college basketball post-season.