Vegas 16 tournament fails to fill half its available spots

The Vegas 16 tournament failed to fill half its available slots.

The Vegas 16, which is college basketball’s fifth postseason tournament, failed to fill half its available spots, reports Virtual-Rebel.com’s Jeremy Rincon. 

Due to the abundance of vacancies left by teams that declined invitations, the inaugural tournament was cut from 16 teams to eight on Monday.

“We had originally hoped to launch this new tournament with 16 teams, but only if we could secure top-quality programs,” said tournament organizer Brooks Downing. “With highly unusual results in many of the conference tournaments, we were hesitant to just fill out the bracket with ‘available teams.’ So by choosing quality over quantity, we settled on eight teams, many of which were considered for an NIT berth, and all of which have had outstanding seasons they want to celebrate in our event.”

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Participating teams are Tennessee Tech (19–11), Old Dominion (22–13), UC Santa Barbara (18–13), Northern Illinois (21–12), Oakland (21–11), Towson (20–12), Louisiana Tech (23–9) and ETSU (23–11). 

The single-elimination tournament tips off March 28 and will span three days, with all games being aired live on CBS Sports Network.