UC Riverside athletics director Wesley Mallette was driving to dinner with his wife on Sunday evening when his phone started to go crazy. The messages and calls were all variations of the same two ideas:
“Congrats on getting in the NIT!”
“Wait, Wes, how are you going to be in two tournaments?”
“I’m confused at this point,” Mallette told CBS Sports on Tuesday, recounting his mindset during one of the strangest days of his professional career. “I’m like, ‘Hold on a second. We didn’t hear from the NIT. Nobody gave us a head’s up.”
That was problem because UC Riverside had, by that point, accepted a bid to the CBI, another postseason basketball tournament that is unaffiliated with the NCAA.
How NIT mix-up left UC Riverside in two postseason tournaments — while another team got burned
Chris Hummer
Thus, what was supposed to be a moment of celebration for a team that had earned the first postseason bid in the program’s 24-year Division I basketball history turned into a 24-hour news cycle of social…
