Winthrop men out, women wait on postseason plans

The CIT and CBI may sound like government agencies that want to hack your email account, but they’re actually college basketball postseason tournaments.

Winthrop men’s basketball has won 20 and 19 games in the last two seasons, and might seem a natural fit for the Collegeinsider.com Postseason Tournament (CIT) or the College Basketball Invitational (CBI), the two newest additions to college basketball’s March offerings. But far more than just win totals goes into deciding whether to pursue opportunities in the tournaments that follow the NCAA tournament and the NIT in the postseason pecking order.

“I really believe that it can be a great thing,” said Winthrop men’s coach Pat Kelsey. “But I think every situation is different, depending on the state of your team, the makeup of it, the type of season you had, how it ended, and then you’ve really got to take the pulse of your team. The level of their excitement for doing that.”

This year’s Winthrop’s men’s and women’s basketball teams provide the perfect example of how the CIT, CBI and the Women’s Basketball Invitational (WBI) can be beneficial to a college hoops program, or simply not worth the effort, expense and further missed class time.

The CBI was the first new tournament on the men’s college hoops scene in nearly 40 years when it debuted in 2008. Run by the Gazelle Group, the tournament is not connected to the NCAA, though member institutions are obviously allowed to participate. The CIT started in 2009, and is run by the web site of the same name. It’s also not connected to the NCAA, and includes exclusively mid-major teams.

The WBI, run by Sport Tours International, began in 2010. There is no women’s version of the CIT.

The NCAA tournament pays for a large portion of its 68 teams’ expenses, while the men’s NIT does the same. Qualifying for those tournaments is tough for schools from the Big South Conference, like Winthrop. Only one team makes the NCAA tournament via an automatic bid claimed by winning the conference tournament. The NIT bid goes to the regular season champion, or highest-ranked team in the regular season standings that didn’t claim the NCAA spot.

The CBI, WBI and CIT have created further options for Big South teams that historically were left out in the cold by the two established tournaments. But unlike the established events, the newer tournaments are not cheap propositions.

The CBI is especially expensive for host schools. The 16-team tournament charges schools $35,000 for first round home games; quarterfinals matchups cost $50,000 to host, and it’s $75,000 to play a semifinals or final game at home. The tournament’s championship round is a best-of-three series, meaning a team that reached the championship would have to pony up $75,000 at least once.

Winthrop athletics director Tom Hickman didn’t have the CIT financial requirements handy during an interview Thursday, but news stories on other schools hosting CIT games have mentioned $30,000 as the first round hosting fee. In the pursuit of exposure, the Big South will financially aid the highest ranked school from the league in the CBI. With Radford and High Point possibly headed to the tournament this season, Winthrop’s men, which finished behind both of those teams in the regular season standings, would not have been eligible for that help.

The money involved in the CBI, CIT and WBI is serious. But Hickman said basketball considerations are usually weighed first.

Those were front and center last season when Winthrop, despite winning 20 games in a season for the first time since 2007-08, didn’t participate in the postseason. After playing four games in four days in the conference tournament, Kelsey’s team was banged up with wear-and-tear injuries to several key contributors. That made contesting the CBI or the CIT seem more like a chore than a beneficial experience.

Winthrop again came up 40 minutes short of the NCAA tournament this season, and with the Big South’s NIT bid going to regular season champ Charleston Southern, the Eagles were left to consider the lesser tournaments. Again, Kelsey declined the chance to pursue a CIT or CBI bid.

“Not that it wouldn’t be exciting to be back in the gym and practicing, but we’re sort of ready to turn the page,” he said.

There is a difference between March Madness and March Malaise, and Kelsey said he wanted to keep basketball fresh for his players. He hates the term “grind” often used to describe the college basketball season, but it can be an accurate way to describe a competition that truly begins in September and doesn’t end until March. During all of that time, there is one goal: to play in the NCAA tournament.

“When you get so close to the ultimate prize two years in a row, you’re so fixated on that. I think that’s kind of the sense I got from our team as well,” said Kelsey. “Not playing for that is a little bit of a letdown.”

There is also the fact that large parts of the core of Winthrop’s roster next season wouldn’t be able to play in a tournament this year. Big men Zach Price, Larry Brown and James Bourne all sat out for various reasons, as did Div. II transfer Roderick Perkins. And incoming freshmen Bjorn Broman and Adam Pickett won’t be on campus until the summer. Any potential carryover benefits to next year’s team would be limited because so many important pieces wouldn’t be able to participate and gain from the experience.

Winthrop’s women are pursuing a WBI bid for different reasons.

If the Eagles (17-13) are included in the 16-team field that will be announced Monday night, they will enter as a road team. The cost of hosting would be prohibitive for Winthrop, which made a total of $8,000 in women’s basketball ticket sales last season, and Hickman said Winthrop Coliseum is booked the next three weekends anyway. But the WBI covers $7,000 of expenses for its teams that commit to playing on the road in the first round, and $9,000 for the second and third rounds. If Winthrop was included in the WBI and drew a regional opponent that could be reached by bus, the expense of playing in the tournament would be a non-issue.

Like Kelsey’s men, Kevin Cook’s women graduate just two seniors. But unlike his counterpart, Cook has the core of next year’s team playing now.

The benefit for Winthrop’s women would come from playing in a postseason tournament for the third straight season, after an NIT trip in 2013 and the program’s first ever NCAA tournament berth last year. Winthrop women’s basketball has never played in the postseason in three straight seasons in its Div. I history and that would be a selling point for Cook and his coaching staff on the recruiting trail.

“Three straight years,” he said, “not every program can say that. I see nothing but advantages.”

That perception is different for the men’s program. The CIT’s testimonial literature lauds the tournament for giving 19 teams their first postseason win in school history. But that’s a hard sell to a men’s program like Winthrop, which has been to the NCAA tournament nine times and whose first postseason win came in the NCAAs against Notre Dame.

Asked if he would raise a banner in the Coliseum honoring participation in the CBI or CIT, Hickman said “no, I don’t think so.”

So while Kelsey is setting up debriefing meetings with his players and turning his attention to the renovation of his office, Cook’s team has been lifting weights and undergoing speed and agility training all week. The Eagles women will resume practice Saturday with the hope that Monday night they get a phone call from WBI organizers with good news. Should they be selected, Cook’s team would play the first round Thursday.

“When you’re a competitor, you want to compete and get another opportunity to get out there,” he said. “I think our players want another crack at it.”

This story was originally published March 13, 2015 at 4:17 PM with the headline "Winthrop men out, women wait on postseason plans."