The College Basketball Invitational, a postseason men’s basketball event, is sticking with the single-site format that was introduced in 2021.
The event, which was held at campus sites from 2008 to 2019, will be held March 19-23 at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach, Florida. The effects of the coronavirus pandemic forced all of college basketball’s national postseason events to single-location environments last season, with Pepperdine winning the eight-team, single-elimination CBI held at the Ocean Center.
The CBI will return to a 16-team bracket in 2022, continuing with a single-elimination format after the championship was held in a best-of-three format prior to 2020, when the event was canceled because of the pandemic.
“The response we received before, during, and after last year’s CBI was overwhelming, especially when you consider the circumstances the country faced at the time,” Gazelle Group president Rick Giles said in a statement. “Because of that, we felt a return to Daytona Beach was warranted.”
The NCAA is moving forward with plans to hold its Division I men’s basketball tournament in its traditional multi-region format in 2022, after the entire tournament was played across multiple venues in Indiana last season.
The NIT, which was reduced from 32 teams to 16 last year, was held at two venues in the Dallas area in 2021. No announcement has been made about the 2022 NIT, which is operated by the NCAA.
Another postseason event, the CollegeInsider.com postseason tournament, was canceled in 2020 and 2021.