Event will offer option to NIT

The initials NIT stand for Not In Tournament, or so the joke goes, but a group that produces several early season tournaments has decided there is room for a third postseason tournament.

The College Basketball Invitational, a 16-team tournament that wants to compete with the NIT for the NCAA tournament’s leftovers, is planning a March debut even though it does not have a television deal in place.

“We looked at who didn’t get into the NCAA tournament and who didn’t get into the NIT, and there were a bunch,” said Rick Giles, president of the Gazelle Group, which produces the 2K Sports College Hoops Classic benefiting Coaches vs. Cancer, the O’Reilly Auto Parts CBE Classic and the Legends Classic.

“I think competition is good,” said Giles, who envisions competing with the NIT for teams left out of the NCAA tournament. “Having choice is good.”

Giles cited the decision by the NIT -- owned by the NCAA since 2005 as part of a settlement in a legal battle -- to reduce its field from 40 to 32 teams as one of the reasons for launching another tournament.

Despite the NIT’s history of financial struggles, Giles said he was confident his group can create a financial model that works.

“We’re not a not-for-profit,” he said.

The College Basketball Invitational would be a single-elimination tournament until the championship series, which would be a best-of-three series. All games would be on campus sites, with an emphasis on regional matchups to limit travel.

The championship series is scheduled to conclude the week before the NCAA championship, and because of that did not require NCAA approval, Giles said.

NCAA executive Greg Shaheen, also president of the NIT, said the NIT has become profitable since the NCAA took over and called the proposed third tournament “part of the open-market environment.”

“Our focus today is the same as it was yesterday, to make the events our membership owns as good as they possibly can be,” Shaheen said.

Giles’ organization pointed to such teams as Connecticut, Louisiana State, Iowa, Oklahoma, Missouri, California and Washington as those that were left out of the NCAA and NIT last season as targets for the proposed event. The group said 15 of 16 schools it contacted said they would have played in the new tournament had it existed last year.

Not surprisingly, the National Assn. of Basketball Coaches is in favor of the new field. It would allow 16 more coaches -- a total of 113 -- to say they reached the postseason.

“As a coaches’ association, we’re always in favor of providing more opportunities for coaches,” said Jim Haney, executive director of the NABC. “Coaches always want another opportunity to play.”

robyn.norwood@latimes.com