2009 NIT Tournament Brackets and Betting Odds Announced

Lost in all the hoopla of the NCAA Tournament, the 2009 NIT Tournament brackets were also announced and - make no mistake about it - this event can be popular.

The 2009 National Invitation Tournament will be a single-elimination tournament of 32 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I teams that are not selected to participate in the 2009 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament. The 72nd annual tournament will begin on March 17 on campus sites and end on April 2 at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

"While all the online sportsbooks were scrambling to get up odds on the 2009 NCAA Basketball Tournament, the poor NIT Tournament has seemingly been forgotten by many of them," said Don Shapiro of Gambling911.com.

Those participating in the NIT Tournament were bubble teams that failed to make the NCAA Tournament essentially.   San Diego, Auburn, Creighton, South Carolina, St. Mary's:  These are just a few of the teams playing in the tournament, denied placement in the main March Madness event.

Doc Sports points out that some important rule changes were made to the NIT Tournament in 2006:

The NCAA announced a revamped selection process starting with the 2006 tournament. The main highlights are:

Teams are no longer required to have .500 or greater records to receive bids. Even with this change, however, all teams receiving invitations for the NIT, to date, have had a record greater than .500.

Similar to the automatic bids the NCAA Tournament grants for all conference tournament champions, all teams that won regular-season conference championships but failed to earn NCAA tournament bids are guaranteed places in the NIT.

Bookmaker.com was now offering odds on this tournament plus receive a 20 percent cash bonus when opening an account.

Tyrone Black, Gambling911.com