WHAT THEY’RE SAYING

WHAT THEY’RE SAYING ABOUT THE CBI

February 19, 2019

– Grant McCasland, North Texas (2018)

Whether you’re in the NCAA Tournament, the NIT, or the CBI, you still have the opportunity to play for a championship. We made the decision to treat the CBI as our NCAA Tournament that year. The experience definitely helped our program grow. The freshmen on our CBI team in 2015 who got that taste of postseason success were our senior leaders on last year’s club that reached the Final Four.
– Porter Moser, Loyola Chicago (2018)


Before we even played a game in the CBI, what we did was we talked about what coach Rodney Terry had done with this Fresno State team (advancing to the 2014 CBI finals and winning the 2016 Mountain West Conference title). We used that to try to get our guys a little bit energized. Our players were disappointed that we weren’t able to make the NCAA Tournament and then, realistically, we came up a little bit short, obviously, for the NIT…We had to get our guys motivated. We also talked about VCU propelling themselves into a Final Four after winning the CBI. So there are a lot of great examples for how teams can use this to kick start.
– Eric Musselman, Nevada (2016)


This was the right thing to do. Overall, it will be good competition for our players…There are a lot of advantages.
– Steve Pederson, Pittsburgh director of athletics (2012)


There’s a perception that tournament is not where you want to be, you want to be in the NCAA Tournament, but it was a chance to keep gaining experience. The biggest thing is we were able to go from there and have a successful year.
– Shaka Smart, VCU (2010)


North Texas gained some positive momentum going into the season this year. They were the winners of the CBI tournament. While the CBI is not the NCAA Tournament…it is still a great step in the right direction for a program like North Texas, who is trying to rebuild. The Mean Green also gained valuable tournament experience playing in the CBI. The tournament experience is going to help this team immensely once conference play starts.
– Bryan Mauro, Fansided (2018)

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