There were actually more than four college basketball games being played last night; six involved women’s teams, and none of them involved teams actually contesting in what we know is March Madness. I know this because I was prompted by a tile on my ESPN homepage and they were somehow given equal billing to the NHL and MLB games that adjoined them–though, to be fair, they did get a higher placement than the early season college lacrosse showdowns that one had to scroll down to even see.
And these involved actual schools I’ve–and yeah, I bet you have heard of. If you Googled hard enough you too would have landed what THE SPORTING NEWS’ Mark Lancaster updated this morning:
The third edition of the Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament is here, with the top women’s teams that don’t make the NCAA field shooting to end their season with a trophy… Though the tournament’s history is brief, the Big Ten is 2 for 2 in producing WBIT champions. Illinois won the inaugural event in 2024 and Minnesota took home the title last year. Coaches hope a successful WBIT showing can be a springboard for the following season, and that has been the case for the Illini and Gophers, who each achieved better records and an NCAA bid the season after taking the WBIT title.
Last night Wisconsin kept up their end of that promise with a three-point edging of Harvard, while the Ivy League remained in contention as Columbia conquered Cal in a Berkeley showdown of what arguably was the most progressive matchup of any post-season tournament.
And they were not the only ladies’ boondoggle to choose from, as an even deeper Google search turned up this breaking news from six days ago courtesy of the GADSDEN TIMES’ Maxwell Donaldson:
The Women’s National Invitation…has fallen in stature in recent years, as the WBIT replaced the tournament three years ago as the second-tier tournament for college women’s basketball. The WNIT now offers 48 bids…The WNIT offered automatic bids for teams that were two-seeds in their respective conference tournaments and didn’t make either the NCAA or WBIT tournaments.
Montana State and South Dakota moved into the “Great 8” (don’t you dare call it “Elite”) with home court ousters of WCC standardbearers Pepperdine and San Francisco. Not that I suspect all but the most hardcore supporters would care; there’s far more to do this this time of year in Malibu and Inner Richmond than there are in Bozeman and Vermillion.
And that’s the point that I had driven home when I attempted to peruse perhaps one of the few remaining print resources that compiles results in agate type, the crowded stats page of the New York/California Post. I took a close look at yesterday’s. 
Not one mention. Nor even that for the men’s NIT which held its quarterfinals on Wednesday night. I have to believe they took place, because CBS SPORTS’ Cameron Salerno stayed up until early yesterday morning to tell us they did:
Auburn and Illinois State both won quarterfinal games on Wednesday to advance to the NIT semifinals and will face each other April 2 at Hinkle Fieldhouse. The Tigers and Redbirds join Tulsa and New Mexico as the final four teams in the 2026 NIT.
No. 4 seed Illinois State moved on with a 61-55 win over Dayton behind 16 points from Johnny Kinziger. Illinois State has defeated Kent State, Wake Forest and Dayton to reach the semifinals. No. 1 seed Auburn, the lone high-major team remaining in the field, defeated Nevada 75-69.
I admit to having a soft spot for these secondary confabs. My first-ever college basketball post-season experience was on a St. Patrick’s Day afternoon at the then-new Madison Square Garden when my dad took me to see the favorite team of every New York Jew–the Notre Dame Fighting Irish–take on an Army team fronted by an up-and-coming young coach named Mike Krzyzewski. Wonder if he ever made it back to a post-season?
Back then the NIT was played exclusively in Manhattan; even in recent years the Final Fou guaranteed a trip to the Mecca for the participants. Now they’re heading to Indianapolis. The women are heading to Wichita. Nice places to be in spring I suspect. But c’mon, where are you gonna find a decent knish in those outposts?
I’ve accepted the fact that these tourneys have grown increasingly irrelevant in an era where newspapers continue to move toward extinction and 136 teams representing 106 different colleges are otherwise preoccupied with their respective Big Dances. I just wasn’t prepared to see this degree of irrelevance evolve so quickly as compared to even recent years. I subscribe to the perhaps outdated philosophy that something has be tangible to be real. It’s the primary reason I continue to be one of the only folks in my entire neighborhood that still gets actual newspapers delivered to my door. If you happen to be a fellow Luddite, don’t bother looking for any such tangible reality. To even learn what happened, you’ll have to rely on IT for your -IT news.