Virginia Earns NIT Bid, Draws Mississippi State In Opening Game

For the first time since 2013, the Virginia men’s basketball team missed the NCAA Tournament field as the March Madness brackets were unveiled Sunday. Instead, the Hoos turn their attention to the National Invitation Tournament where they earned a first round date with Mississippi State on Wednesday night at 7 p.m.

UVA will host the game at the John Paul Jones Arena even though MSU is the No. 3 seed in the region. The game will air on ESPN2. The other matchups in this region include No. 2 seed North Texas vs. Texas State (if the Cavaliers win, this would be their next opponent), No. 4 seed Colorado vs. St. Bonaventure, and No. 1 Oklahoma vs. Missouri State.

Mississippi State fell in the NIT title game last season against Memphis, 77-64. Several players from that squad remain with the Bulldogs.

Iverson Molinar, a 6’3″ junior guard, earned a spot on the All-NIT Tournament Team a year ago as well as a spot on the All-SEC First Team this season. He averaged 17.6 points per game and surpassed 1,000 career points this season. He scored in double figures in every game he played this season. Cameron Matthews, a 6’7″ sophomore wing, scored a season-high 19 points in the final game of his freshman season. He has averaged just 3.0 points per game in an up-and-down season in terms of minutes and production.

A pair of players not in that NIT final figure heavily into the equation for this year’s team. One that is plenty familiar to UVA fans is North Carolina graduate transfer Garrison Brooks. The 6’9″ forward started all 33 games this season for the Bulldogs and averaged 10.3 points with 6.6 rebounds. Tolu Smith, another frontcourt transfer player, sat out last season after joining MSU from Western Kentucky. The 6’11” forward averaged 14.1 points and 6.3 rebounds this season.

Ben Howland coaches Mississippi State after previous career stops at Northern Arizona, Pittsburgh, and UCLA. He led all four programs to NCAA Tournament berths and guided UCLA to three straight Final Four appearances in 2006, 2007, and 2008 with a runner-up finish in 2006. Two of those seasons, of course, also featured Pac-10 games against an upstart new head coach at Washington State. Tony Bennett took over the top spot at WSU ahead of the 2006-2007 season. In fact, the first conference game of Bennett’s head coaching career came at then No. 1 UCLA on Dec. 28, 2006, a game the Bruins won 55-52 – WSU missed a go-ahead 3-point attempt with approximately 6 seconds to go trailing 53-52 and a second attempt to tie the game at the buzzer.

Virginia won the NIT in 1980 and 1992. The Hoos made the quarterfinals in their last appearance in 2013 before losing to Iowa. That run featured Joe Harris, Akil Mitchell, Justin Anderson, Mike Tobey, and others. The core of that team joined Malcolm Brogdon, Anthony Gill, and London Perrantes the next season to win the 2014 ACC Tournament title and set the table for an extended stay among the nation’s elite programs.

The last ACC team to win the NIT was Wake Forest in 2000.

Virginia finished the regular season at 18-12 and then split games at the ACC Tournament to enter the NIT at 19-13. That opens the possibility of a 20-win season again. The Hoos have hit that mark in 9 of the previous 10 seasons with only last season’s pandemic-altered schedule below that mark at 18-7.