Disappointingly, Liberty fell short of the ultimate goal of winning the Conference USA Tournament and earning the league’s automatic bid by losing to Missouri State in the Quarterfinals this past week in Huntsville, Alabama. It is certainly a letdown but there is more basketball for this group left to play.

There is a very detailed and somewhat complicated qualification for the NIT. Liberty would qualify and clinch an automatic bid to the NIT by being a regular season champion that does not make the NCAA Tournament and has a top-125 average ranking across seven metrics (BPI, KPI, NET, KenPom, SOR, Torvik, WAB). Posting a record of 25-7 overall and 17-3 in CUSA, outright regular season champions, Liberty’s average ranking of those metrics is currently 95.6, securing the team an automatic spot in the NIT.

By not making the Big Dance it leaves a bit of a stain on the 2025-26 season, but once that sting of defeat wears off, hopefully we can all rally behind the team for a potential NIT appearance.

No team in the country begins their season with a set goal of making the NIT at the end of the year, but it can be a decent consolation prize for teams that fall short of being one of the 68 teams that make the NCAA Tournament. Liberty falls into this category this March.

The NIT field of 32 teams will be released on Sunday, March 15 at 9:30 p.m. Eastern. The top 16 teams are seeded 1-4 in 4 regions while the remainder of the 16 teams are placed into the bracket based on several factors including geography. The first three rounds of the NIT are played at campus sites, hosted by the higher seeded teams. The first round will be played Tuesday, March 17 and Wednesday, March 18 with the second round being played Saturday, March 21 and Sunday, March 22. The quarterfinals will be played Tuesday, March 24 and Wednesday, March 25.

The semifinals (April 2, 2026) and finals (April 5th, 2026) will take place during Final Four weekend in Indianapolis. The semis will be played at Hinkle Fieldhouse while the championship is at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.

In addition to Liberty, Belmont (Missouri Valley), UNC Wilmington (CAA), Navy (Patriot), South Alabama (Sun Belt) and Stephen F. Austin (Southland) have already secured a bid to the NIT. This will be Liberty’s second ever NIT appearance, having only previously made the field in 2023. That season, the Flames defeated Villanova at Liberty Arena in the first round before losing at Wisconsin.

There is one website I was able to find that does NIT bracketology –DRatings – which has Liberty as a 3-seed