Every college basketball player's dream is to make the NCAA Tournament and play for a national championship, and while many of them unfortunately don't get the chance, a select few will get the opportunity to play for another postseason title.
The National Invitation Tournament − commonly known as the NIT − is another postseason tournament put on by the NCAA that actually started in 1938, a year before the NCAA Tournament we know today began and actually was the more prestigious event for decades. Now in 2025 it obviously doesn't have the same allure as March Madness, but the NIT offers teams the chance to play together one more time and win a postseason title − and the ones that just missed out on the NCAA Tournament the opportunity to prove the selection committee wrong.