As Selection Sunday inches closer, men’s college basketball will have at least one less postseason tournament this year.
The College Basketball Invitational, more commonly known as the CBI, will not be held this year, with tournament organizers citing “circumstances beyond our control” in a post on social media.
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The post ended on a hopeful note, though, saying “We’ll see you next year!”
The CBI was founded in 2007 and first held in 2008, with the tournament made up of teams that failed to qualify for the NCAA tournament or the NIT.
The event’s early fields were regularly dotted with power-conference teams, with Oregon State, Oregon and Pitt among its earliest champions, as well as VCU, which won the tournament in 2010, one year before the Rams made a Cinderella run to the Final Four.
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In recent years, though, it has been made up entirely of teams from mid- and low-majors, some of which finished the regular season with losing records. The CBI hasn’t had a participant from one of the sport’s five major conferences since DePaul in 2019.
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When Indiana turned down an invitation to the CBI in 2014, then-athletic director Fred Glass told the Indianapolis Star, a part of the USA TODAY Network, “We’re Indiana. We don’t play in the CBI.”
The CBI historically required an entry fee for teams, but in 2023, it began providing NIL funding for participants.
Still, it and other secondary and tertiary postseason tournaments have increased obstacles in recent years, particularly as many programs that miss the NCAA tournament look to get as early of a start as possible on building next season’s roster through the transfer portal.
Over the past several years, the NIT has had a growing number of teams declining invitations. The College Insider Tournament (CIT), hasn’t been held in five of the past six seasons, though the first of those absences was due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: College Basketball Invitational won’t be held in 2026
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