2025 NIT semifinals notes/preview

One for the road?

A very kind subscriber (full disclosure: he has a personal investment in one of the teams involved) reached out to me last week to ask if I’d write up a couple of previews for the NIT semifinals. I didn’t plan on it until this afternoon but these are actually two really satisfying semifinals with four teams I like or love to some extent in them. Given that I was planning on taking the day off prior to packed-in Final Four coverage this is a little harried and rushed, but think of it as similar to what Jordan Majewski does at his site or Jon Fendler at his. These are quick one-offs using the data I’ve got available at hand and will be free to read.

BUT! You should sign up if you haven’t already to see all the Final Four stuff I’ll put up this weekend: full 3,000+ word previews of each game, notes on the Women’s Final Four as well, along with tomorrow’s special, which is a breakdown of a set I really loved from the Elite Eight that didn’t score any points. Also: photos. Lots of photos from Texas.

Time to dive in.

North Texas (-1.5) vs. UC Irvine, 7 PM ET, ESPN

Two monstrously elite defensive programs for their respective levels with two completely different ways of going about it. North Texas has a crazy aggressive perimeter defense that forces plenty of turnovers, commits plenty of fouls, and is roughly as enjoyable to play against in the half-court as taking a hammer to your cranium. UC Irvine offers a wonky combination of drop coverage built around rim denial but also the elimination of catch-and-shoot threes except for shooters hitting under 33% on the season. They also deploy a weird shifting 2-3/3-2 zone that they’ve yet to really use in the NIT but caused mental strife for UCSD for roughly 30 minutes.

Neither offense is really capable of breaking down the opposing defense in an exciting manner, so I’m expecting some sort of a first-to-60 game that could lean UC Irvine’s way if it’s foul-heavy but could go to North Texas if the officials are feeling a bit reliant on how grabby they can get. UNT loves to attack through the post pretty heavily but that feels less than optimal against a 96th-percentile post offense; UCI really needs to play fast to score reliably, which is tough to generate against one of the three or four most effective pace-limiters in the sport in UNT.

In what’s likely to be a low-and-slow game (KenPom projects 63 possessions, but worth noting these teams have gone below the possession projection in four of five regulation games), this comes down to which half-court offense I trust slightly more to break down the opposing half-court defense, which I guess puts me in North Texas’s corner against my personal wishes. UNT will try and go at Bent Leuchten early, but assuming that doesn’t go well, they’ll try to shift to more of a P&R-based offense that could exploit UC Irvine’s shrink defense and open up some of the catch-and-shoot threes they try not to allow.

On the other end, UC Irvine’s best shot is hunting Bent Leuchten at every turn and hoping this is the game Bent goes for 25+. North Texas usually doesn’t double in the post, and whereas UCI’s got excellent post defense, UNT sits in just the 54th-percentile nationally. He could force their hand if he’s got 14 points at halftime and UC Irvine leads by 6 or something. Beyond that it’s going to be the usual UCI dosage of attempting to run out on the numerous misses they’ll face, and beyond that, hoping Leuchten’s gravity/the drives from Justin Hohn and Myles Che creates enough room for kickout threes that North Texas usually defend pretty well. (Also worth noting they don’t overcommit often on drives, instead trusting their perimeter guys to handle these 1-on-1.)

As noted earlier, I have a slight lean to North Texas in a low-scoring game - we’ll say UNT 61, UCI 58 - but in a true coin-flip game where only one team still has the same head coach they did two weeks ago, attempting to project this bang-on is difficult.

Loyola Chicago (-2.5) vs. Chattanooga, 9:30 PM ET, ESPN

Whereas I feel reasonably good about what to expect in the above game I’m relatively clueless on this one, and this is as someone who’s watched both teams a few times this year and knows what each coach wants to run. Such is the nature of the two teams involved in each game. North Texas and UCI have both had pretty consistent results and processes all year long; Chattanooga’s first act of the season was giving Saint Mary’s a ride for ~30 minutes before losing to an awful Austin Peay team four days later. Loyola Chicago lost by 31 points to Saint Louis then defeated them by eight on a neutral court 13 days later.

It has more to do with how each team is structured and less about coaching ideals or whatever. Loyola takes a ton of threes, as does Chattanooga. Both teams rank in the 72nd-percentile or higher of jumper usage. Both teams force a lot of pull-up jumpers, which can either go really well if the opposing team is cold/filled with meh shooters or really horribly if you’re facing plus shot-makers. (This is how UTC got bounced from the SoCon Tournament by Furman.)

I really could be swayed either way here. The case for Chattanooga actually offers similar reasons to the first game: a superior overall two-way half-court game and somewhat more sustainable ways to score against the opposing defense. While Loyola is similar to UNT in that they don’t overhelp on drives and functionally stay pretty conservative/packed-in defensively in the first place, they force a ton of dribble jumpers by opponents willing to shoot over the top of their structure. Which, uh, less than ideal against a team in the 87th-percentile of jumper efficiency nationally and in the 88th-percentile of hitting dribble jumpers.

As with all things UTC I do wonder if it’s just gonna be a cold night in unfamiliar territory at which point this would swing to Loyola, who’s got the better defense (obviously) and a reasonably improved offense from previous Drew Valentine efforts. The Izzo acolyte will attack through a wide variety of dribble handoffs, off-ball screens, and backdoor cuts. More athletic teams and defenses can shut this down, but UTC intermittently goes in and out of getting any consistent stops, and there’s a path to a team who’s been awful at defending the perimeter most of the year just getting blitzed.

While UNT/UCI has mostly predictable outcomes in that a blowout would surprise me a lot, anything within, like, 18 points in either direction for this game is reasonable. Ideally as a viewer, both teams are hitting from downtown, and two offenses that don’t generate or allow a ton of free throws play out a pretty clean and fun nightcap to the NIT semifinals. My forced prediction here is Chattanooga 74, Loyola Chicago 72. Do I feel good about it? No! Such is the NIT, folks.