NIT bracket projections: Mountain West has three teams in the mix

The Mountain West is all but assured just one team for the NCAA tournament, and that will go to the winner of next weeks conference tournament and at this point it is looking like that team will be San Diego State.

With projections to the Big Dance not all that exciting within the Mountain West, we decided to take a look at the NIT projections.

A few notes about the NIT, schools that win their regular season conference title but do not go to the NCAA tournament receive a bid to the NIT, so that is why some teams that have better resumes would get left out.

There are three teams getting consideration for the NIT, and they are Fresno State, Boise State and UNLV. Yet, Nevada which has a much better RPI than the Rebels at 108 to 136 is not receiving any consideration.

Bracket Matrix and NYC Buckets both have NIT projections -- updated as of the evening of March 4 for the latter and March 1 for the former -- so we will be using their brackets.

Bracket Matrix has only Boise State in the field and as a six seed facing off against Washington, meaning the Broncos would not even get a home game in the NIT. The Broncos do have three more wins than the Huskies but their RPI's are nearly identically with 79 for Boise State and 78 for Washington.

UNLV is getting consideration from Bracket Matrix amongst 14 other schools.

Over at NYC Buckets, they are even less high on Boise State and have them as one of the last teams in as an eight seed where they will be playing No. 1 seeded Oregon State. A top see for the Beavers looks odd with just 17 wins but RPI plays a big role as they sit at 33 with the help of a strong Pac-12 conference this year.

Fresno State is also an eight seed and they would go to the Midwest and face top-seeded Michigan.

The NIT bracket projections will change quite often as there are conference tournaments underway and as a reminder the teams that won the regular season but don't go to the NCAA's will find a landing spot in the NIT.