Illinois State coach won't shed any tears about NCAA tourney snub

To be sure, some coaches across the country railed at their team's exclusion from the NCAA Tournament field.

Illinois State's Tim Jankovich, though no less disappointed than the rest, chose a more philosophical and mathematical bent.

"I understand that we deserve to chosen for the NCAA Tournament," Jankovich said, "but so do some other teams that did not get selected as well.

"At some point, the curves meet and there's not enough spots for all the deserving teams."

Even though the NCAA Tournament committee appeared to grade on a curve that benefited big-name schools with a poor RPI.

That's as opposed to Illinois State, which failed to earn its first NCAA bid since 1998 despite posting a 24-9 record and earning a final RPI number of 33.

All of the top 41 teams on the RPI list made the NCAA field except for No. 32 Dayton, which lost nine of its last 16 games, and Illinois State.

The Redbirds made a big rush to gain admission to the field. They won eight of the last nine games until losing the Missouri Valley Conference title game to Drake by 30 points.

"We were done," Jankovich said. "We were spent. We didn't get time to prepare for a great team. But the two times we played them with time to prepare, it was a one-possession game."

Jankovich hopes that double-digit loss -- the team's only one, save a 70-57 defeat to Indiana on Nov. 23 -- didn't knock ISU out of the running.

CollegeRPI.com's Jerry Palm had a theory that suggested just how close the Redbirds were. He picked the entire field correctly and had Illinois State in, too, provided Georgia lost the SEC title game.

"It's possible that ISU lost out to Georgia," Palm said in an e-mail. "We'll never know. What got them in trouble was a high number of bad losses. In this field, it was just too many."

The Redbirds' 4 losses to non-NCAA Tournament teams all came on the road -- to Eastern Michigan (14-17), Bradley (17-15), Northern Iowa (18-14) and Indiana State (15-16).

Illinois State still gets a chance to play in the postseason for the first time since 2001.

The Redbirds earned a No. 2 seed in the 32-team NIT. They'll play host to Utah State (24-10) on Wednesday at 9 p.m. Ohio State owns the top seed in ISU's quadrant.