NIT bracketology: Cal probably out, CBI or bust

The California Golden Bears had a great start to the regular season and looked assuredly to be on the NCAA bubble. A disastrous January submarined all those hopes, and despite a decent return to form in February, they were never quite the same.

Cal lost 14 of their final 21 games to fall out of the NCAA picture and end up in NIT bubble territory. Right now Bracket Matrix places the Bears as one of the last teams out, right there with Clemson, Florida, Kent State, Kansas State, UMass, Penn State, Sam Houston State, TCU, South Carolina, Toledo and Wyoming. Teams expected to make the NIT include UCLA (1 seed), Stanford (2 seed) and Arizona State (7 seed)

So it probably all comes down to whether the Bears want to cover the cost of hosting any sort of CBI games. A lot of big schools generally pass on this because they have to cover some of the costs of hosting this type of tournament.

We'll know later tonight.