Defiantly Dutch Q&A: CIT Selection Committee member Rich Zvosec

The Collegeinsider.com Tournament is exclusively for mid-majors, but the fledgling tournament—which debuted last year with Old Dominion emerging as the champion of a 16-team field—is still largely a mystery even to the fans of the schools that hope to participate in it.

In hopes of learning more about the CIT and the process by which its field is selected, we spoke Friday to CIT Selection Committee member Rich Zvosec, the former head coach at St. Francis (NY) and Missouri-Kansas City. Zvosec was a huge help in not only explaining the thinking of the Selection Committee but also in evaluating Hofstra’s chances of receiving a bid. Thanks to Rich for his time and for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at how the CIT works. (PS: Make sure to select the Flying Dutchmen, Rich!)

What does this week entail for the committee?

Basically, what happens is throughout the course of the year, you go see games. Anybody you see that you like that you think will be a potential participant, we’ll send the names to Riley Wallace, the chairman of the committee, just to kind of give a working background for it.

The tournament was set up with the idea of rewarding mid-major teams who have a good year and get left out of the NCAA or NIT. I’ll give you the perfect example: Keith Dambront, who is the head coach at Akron, is a good friend of mine. A couple years ago, they go 26-7. Miami of Ohio beats them on a last-second shot in a [MAC] championship game. They not only don’t get a NCAA bid, they don’t get an NIT bid. I called Keith on Monday [and said] ‘It was a shock seeing you guys are too good for the NIT, you turned them down.’ And he says ‘Rich, we never got a call.’

Another year, IUPUI won like 25 games and that was the last league I coached in, the Summit, with UMKC. So the whole premise of the tournament is to take somebody like Hofstra, who’s had a good year, has everybody coming back, their best players are coming back, and reward them. It’s not like the NIT. Texas Tech out of the Big 12 is probably going to get in. I primarily do Big 12 games for ESPN, so from what I’m hearing, they’re going to get in at 17-15. The whole premise of the tournament is not to take the seventh- or eighth-place team with a losing record from a power six conference. Last year the inaugural year, Old Dominion, obviously out of the Colonial, won the tournament. This year, they used that as a springboard [to the NCAAs]. That’s the whole premise.

About 10 days ago, everybody on the committee sent a tentative list—obviously not final, because you have to wait for conference tournaments to play out—and then it’s kind of a wait and see what happens with the tournaments, because of the change in the NCAA where a regular season champion that doesn’t get an at-large and doesn’t win their conference tournament automatically goes to the NIT. That helps Hofstra, because that’s [a number of conferences] that would have been prime candidates to [send] the second place team.

Right now, Hofstra is on the board. And what plays into their favor—obviously, 19 wins helps, they have a winning record in the conference, their best players are returning. So that all is in their favor. And then what will happen now is there’s a couple other teams that are on the board that are also on the bubble for the NIT. So basically, what will happen now is as soon as the NIT pairings come out, then we’ll have another conference call and kind of hash it out with the people on the committee.

When do you want to have the field settled?

It’ll be Sunday night. Possibly Monday. Probably more like Monday, although it helps us that Riley Wallace is the chairman of the committee. He lives in Hawaii, helps with the time change. It’s early out there. [Laughs] We want to have everything set by Monday. Another thing that has to be worked out logistically is who goes where. There are some places that, for whatever reason, they can’t host a game. Maybe they don’t play in their own gym on campus, that type of thing.

Schools such as George Mason and Creighton have already announced they will host a first round CIT game. How does that process work? Do schools seek you out and declare they want to play, or do you seek them out?

We’re talking to a lot of schools. A team like Creighton—especially Creighton, that’s out near my area—they were identified real early, because in Creighton’s case, two things work in their favor for our tournament. Not necessarily what they wanted. Wichita State got off to an unbelievable start in the non-conference and Northern Iowa has been ranked since probably early December, so it’s always looked like Creighton was going to be the third- or fourth-place team in that league. And they draw 18,000 a game. It’s unbelievable. So they were identified really early. That’s pretty much kind of where we’re at. The other 14 slots are still pretty fluid.

Back to Hofstra for a moment: Last year, the CIT did its best to bracket teams geographically to limit travel expenses. So are you comparing Hofstra to teams in the northeast as much or more so than nationally?

That’s part of it. Regionally, we try and match teams—for example, an Iona-Hofstra might be a decent matchup. Even a Hofstra-Fairfield. So we’ll look at things like that. Even going down a little further south, another team that’s on the board is a team like Campbell. Campbell-Hofstra. We do try and keep it geographical.

The problem that we have right now is Fairfield is still on the board with the NIT. That’s obviously a team that we’ve identified. We don’t know, we're kind of in a holding pattern right there as well.

Hofstra and Fairfield already played this year. Would you be less likely to put those teams together because of that?

No, actually in a way, it could help, because you get a rematch, you get the revenge [angle]. Quite frankly, we don’t look at that.

How about conference foes? James Madison and Old Dominion played in the semifinals last year. Do you try to avoid pitting conference teams against each other until that point?

If it happens earlier, that’s just the way it is. You try and move teams geographically [so] if you’re taking more than one team from a league—for example, you could end up with a Hofstra-George Mason down the road—nothing you can do about that.

Hofstra finished 8-2 in its last 10 games and was the first team in CAA history to finish over .500 in conference after falling at least five games under. Does finishing well have an impact on the Selection Committee?

That’s big. That’s a criteria. A lot of it is when we’ll talk with teams—and without mentioning names—there’s some teams out there that we talk to, they just don’t want to play, you know what I mean? And you would look at them and say ‘You don’t want to continue?’ I think what happens is if you’ve got a group of seniors and they had higher expectations and it’s like ‘Ehh, you know what, we don’t want to do this.’

This isn’t the number one factor, but we really like the idea of a team that is on the rise, that has guys coming back—I keep going back to the Old Dominion example—that can use it as a springboard. And that’s why teams want to keep playing.

How do I put this: It won’t necessarily get you in, that you want to keep playing, but it’ll certainly eliminate you if you aren’t thrilled about the idea of continuing to play [laughs]. Hey, we want a good time, and we want kids excited about the experience.

Obviously we can’t reward everybody. That’s the type of thing we’re trying to reward. The kid Jenkins is a junior, that helps.

Has it been easier putting the tournament together now that you have a year under your belt and people are more aware of it?

It is. It is. I’ll give you the perfect example: If Tom was on the fence [about] should you do it should you do it, my first thing would be to call Tommy Dempsey at Rider and ask him what he thinks. There is a lot of that going on with, hey, if you’re not sure—because, quite frankly, the CBI is trying to get teams too—it’s like, hey, call Jim Les at Bradley, call, like I said, Tommy at Rider and ask them what they thought. We feel pretty good about it because we didn’t get any bad feedback from any of the teams. And it certainly helps.

Do you find more schools are interested now that inaugural CIT teams such as Old Dominion and Oakland have made the NCAA Tournament?

It has [helped]. A team that has guys coming back like Oakland, they had all those kids coming back. Anybody who was like ‘Ehh I’m not sure,’ hey, here you go, follow Greg Kampe and Oakland and he’ll tell you the benefit of it. So it certainly has helped us.

Is there a bigger scramble for CIT and even CBI bids because the NCAA bubble is so weak and fluid this year that a lot of BCS schools are going to get knocked into the NIT?

It may be more of a scramble this year than in the past, because the Pac-10 is so bad. You could always count on three to five teams out of the Pac-10 in the tournament. Hell, they may only get one. So a team like Fairfield, for example, who in a normal year may get into the NIT because [the NCAA Tournament is] taking five out of the Pac-10—they may not get in this year because the NIT will end up taking a 17-15 Texas Tech or a 17-14 Arizona or something like that.

In a sense it doesn’t affect us, partially because we’re not considering a Texas Tech or that type of team anyhow, whereas the CBI might be. But it does affect us indirectly through other teams that now all of a sudden don’t get into the NIT.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch.

In which I provide my long-overdue and long-winded take on the CIT bid, or lack thereof (Or: Feel Like A Number)

Who knows? Maybe the Flying Dutchmen would have gone all the way with the CIT.

Greetings from Connecticut, where I offer you a joke that’s two weeks old but still relevant (to me, anyway): If aliens land in the Nutmeg State while Jim Calhoun is in the hospital, does anyone get a free anal probing?

You should have seen the coverage afforded Calhoun’s absence from UConn’s first-round game against Chattanooga (and can you imagine how badly the Huskies would have destroyed the Mocs if Calhoun was healthy?). The late-night news was led by some talking head yapping about Calhoun while standing in front of the UConn medical center…which, you know, was several hundred miles away FROM WHERE CALHOUN WAS HOSPITALIZED.

Then some vapid sports anchor said Calhoun would probably be glad to trade a day in the hospital in exchange for a tournament win. Oh really? The guy’s had cancer three times. I can’t imagine he wanted to kick back in the hospital. And why would someone whose Huskies squads are 14-1 in first-round games feel the need to sacrifice his health for a Round of 64 victory? Sheesh.

You’ll have to forgive me for getting equal parts angry and nostalgic. After all, the day Calhoun was hospitalized was also the day the CAA basketball season ended. VCU lost to UCLA that night in the semifinals of the Jay Wright Invitational.

(Parenthetical tangent: When do you think Jay realized he wasn’t at Hofstra anymore? When he was able to swap disgusting, overly greasy slices of pizza from Campus Pizza for authentic cheese steaks? When he realized his contract had a perk beyond a car? Or when he got two freaking home games to open the NCAA Tournament? Winning 18 in a row and getting a 13 seed must feel like a long, long time ago.)

Anyway, a night before Eric Maynor missed the last shot of his collegiate career (isn’t that ironic, in that it’s not ironic at all), George Mason continued to pay for its 2006 deal with the devil when Penn State hit a miracle shot to force overtime in a first-round NIT game. The Nittany Lions went on to win the game, and then won four more to win the NIT. Haha Mason. Too bad.

So that was it for the CAA in 2008-09. Thanks for playing, drive home safely. Too bad mid-major teams couldn’t participate in a third or fourth tournament. It would be nice if a young, promising squad had another opportunity to play and an opportunity to compete for a championship, no matter how piddly it may appear to others, and some nice hats and T-shirts.

Too bad there’s…not…something…like…that.

Apparently, there WAS something like that. Multiple somethings like that, even, in which CAA rivals Old Dominion, James Madison and Northeastern participated. Not only that, but ODU won the newer tournament, the CollegeInsider.com Tournament, and got to the championship game by beating JMU in the semis. Northeastern, meanwhile, won a game in the College Basketball Invitational, which is in its second year.

But participating in one of these fledgling tournaments didn’t appeal to Hofstra, even though the team, by any measure, deserved a chance to play in the expanded postseason. The Dutchmen won 21 games (20 against Division I foes). They went 4-2 against the CAA’s CBI/CIT trio (that’s gotta be a record for most acronyms in a single breath). The Dutchmen finished in much stronger fashion (5-2 in their last seven CAA games, including the tourney) than either Northeastern or JMU, both of which went 2-5 over that span.

Yet the decision-makers at Hofstra apparently figured nobody would notice when the Dutchmen “elected” to stay home. When people did notice—the thread on CBI/CIT pairings reached five pages, only the ninth thread to go that long since August 2006, the things I do for you—a letter was sent to Pride Club members explaining that the Dutchmen did not want to play in anything other than the NCAA or NIT. That, in turn, inspired another long thread.

I get turning down a CBI bid. Any tournament that offers a bid and a home game to anyone willing to pony up $60,000 for the right to host, no matter how poor the bidder’s record, is a joke. Of course, Oregon State is in the best-of-three title series (another joke…seriously, single-elimination has been perfect for nearly seven decades, but NOW we need a best-of-three series to determine a champion?), so there you go. Hey, has anyone noted the Beavers’ coach bears an uncanny resemblance to Michelle Obama?

But the CIT was a perfect spot for Hofstra. And let’s be honest: Hofstra turning down a fledgling tournament is a lot like me turning down a reasonably attractive prom date in 1991 because she was the new kid in town.

Sure, there’d be some risk involved. She might have bad teeth and bad breath. She might have a hideous voice and a worse laugh. She might hate various races and religions as well as dentists. I might spend the entire night praying for the clock to move.

Or, you know, she could end up a more aggressive Andrea Zuckerman, or she might want to talk about that one time at band camp, or she might want to recreate Meat Loaf’s “Paradise By The Dashboard Light,” sans all that forever stuff.

You take the chance, and maybe you get smoked in the first round. Or maybe you’re the ones holding aloft the CIT trophy.

And let’s be honest here, too: Who is Hofstra—a program that owns two postseason victories at the Division I level—to turn down the CIT?

Playing in the CIT wasn’t beneath Drake, which reached the NCAA Tournament last year, or Bradley, which has won the NIT four times, reached the NCAA Final Four twice and lost in the finals of the first CBI. It wasn’t beneath Old Dominion, which made the NCAA Tournament twice and the NIT Final Four once between 2005-07, played in last year’s inaugural CBI and was ecstatic to win the CIT.

Maybe Hofstra didn’t feel beneath the tournament at all. Maybe, once again, this was all about the nickels and the dimes.

It cost teams a reported $28,000 to host a CIT game. The administration was probably worried about making back its investment, given the minimal attention paid to the CIT, but couldn’t the school have accepted a road game in the first round and hoped a victory would build a little bit of momentum and interest for a quarterfinal game at the Arena?

Old Dominion drew less than 3,000 fans to each of its three home CIT games. But is it so difficult to believe Hofstra could not have drawn 2,000 fans at $15 a pop? Hell, 1,500 fans at $15 a pop is $22,500, and I’m confident Hofstra could net $5,500 in concessions and what not.

Here’s what rankles me when we get to the nickels and the dimes: Men’s basketball is The Sport at Hofstra. (just ahead of men’s lacrosse—oh, and let’s get this out of the way right now: Football fans, I’m actually quite fond of you and the sport and the team, but if you want to insist otherwise, the email address is defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.)

The men’s basketball program makes money. It gets the most press, traditional and otherwise. It performs well on the court and does not embarrass the University off it. It has a coach who embraces his role as a spokesman for the University and is willing to kiss as many babies and conduct as many grip-and-grins as needed in order to spread the gospel.

So it looks bad, for the school as well as the CAA, when the University refuses to participate in a postseason tournament. Men’s basketball sure as hell is not The Sport at Northeastern, where the Huskies play their home games in a hockey arena that looks and feels a lot a 19th-century theatre. Yet the administration there thought enough of the program to send it out west for a pair of games in the CBI and to risk a potential home game if the Huskies got any farther.

I don’t think men’s hoops is The Sport at James Madison, where the football team was ranked no. 1 for most of last season. But the administration recognized the value of rewarding a team that exceeded all expectations by having its best season in a decade

The Flying Dutchmen were one of only seven 20-win teams that failed to participate in a postseason tournament. Only one of those other schools (Wright State of the Horizon) came from a conference ranked above the CAA by Ken Pomeroy. The others came from the Sun Belt, Southland and Big South. Not exactly the company the CAA wants to keep.

Tom Pecora has laughably come under fire for the Dutchmen passing on the CIT. Some fans think the Dutchmen turned the bid down because he wanted to hang on to his analyst gig with CBS College Sports Network. That’s hilarious. You think Pecora’s desire to get some face time on a network nobody gets trumps his competitive desires? He’s got a team that’s primed to peak over the next two years and he’d rather talk about the NCAA Tournament instead of get the Dutchmen some more experience? Please.

Some believe that Pecora hinted during an interview on WRHU that one reason the school turned a bid down was the lackluster performance of the seniors. I haven’t heard the interview so I have no idea if that’s true or not, but even if it is, so what? The CIT wouldn’t be about one more lap around the track for Darren Townes or Arminas Urbutis.

It’d be about getting some more postseason experience for the underclassmen—just like ODU (one senior on its roster), JMU (two seniors) and Northeastern (three seniors) did for their underclassmen-dominated teams and just like Pecora wanted to back in February.

“I think it’s a good thing if you do have a young team, like us,” Pecora told the New York Daily News’ Sean Brennan in early February. “We have a core of three sophomores (Charles Jenkins, Greg Washington and Nathaniel Lester) , so why wouldn’t I want to play more games and get my guys more experience?”

Pecora co-signed that letter to Pride Club members, but don’t kid yourself. He’s a smart man, and he knows there’s no arguing with the bosses when it comes to the nickels and the dimes. This decision came from the top and is a big giant insult—to the players as much as it is to the fans.

Maybe it’s a good life lesson for the players. From here on out, you are nothing more than figures on the bottom line to the people for whom you perform. You can exceed expectations, perform your best at crunch time and still get nothing.

The rest of us are used to feeling like a number. Over the last five years, ticket prices at the Arena have more than doubled. In 2003-04, you could get premium season tickets, the Pride Club discount and membership in the Pride Club for $116. Today, that same trio costs you a cool $246. But you get 25 percent off a maximum of four season tickets with a $100 donation!

Yet the administration that thought nothing of dramatically hiking your ticket prices now doesn’t think it’s worth paying $28,000 to reward you with a postseason tournament game. Too bad. I bet it would have been easier to sell re-seating and another price hike if the Flying Dutchmen actually won the CIT.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com. And join the Defiantly Dutch group at Facebook today!

Explaining our absence...and see you in the CIT?

Just wanted to inform the Loyal Readers (all eight of you!) that this will probably be the last post for at least a few days due to a death in the family. We’ll be back to some semblance of regular posting as soon as we can and humbly request you check in on us when you get a chance.

As for the Flying Dutchmen’s postseason hopes, my guess is they won’t profit from the uncanny success of the Chalke in the mid-majors (only five regular season champs have fallen in their postseason tourneys, with Stephen F. Austin still to play in the Southland finale today; eight regular season champs lost their tourneys and earned automatic bids to the NIT each of the last two years) and earn a bid to the NIT, though you can never rule out the tournament wanting a New York presence.

The tea leaves indicate the Dutchmen won’t host a game in the CBI or CIT, since there’s been no announcement of ticket sales by the school. Hard to blame them for not wanting to fork over $60,000 for a home game in the CBI or $28,000 for a home game in the CIT, especially with the economy in the crapper and most average fans having no idea these tourneys exist. But I think the Dutchmen are deserving of hosting a CIT game, perhaps against Rider, and that they’d have a decent shot at drawing the 2,500 or so fans necessary to make back the fee.

My prediction: The Dutchmen make the CIT and visit Seton Hall. Unbelievably (and I say that with admiration), someone has come up with a site projecting the CIT field. I wish I’d thought of that. That site has the Dutchmen headed for a three seed in the 16-team tournament and a potential game against either high-scoring VMI or regular NIT foe Saint Joseph’s.

Regardless, hopefully we’ll have another game (or two, or three, or four) this season to recap at some point.

Oh, and if Mason makes the NCAA, it’ll confirm every conspiracy theory I’ve ever had about anything and assure that my return post will be X-rated. See you soon.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com. And join the Defiantly Dutch group at Facebook today!