The 2009 National Invitation Tournament was a

single-elimination tournament A single-elimination, knockout, or sudden death tournament is a type of elimination tournament where the loser of each match-up is immediately eliminated from the tournament. Each winner will play another in the next round, until the final matc ...

of 32

National Collegiate Athletic Association The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...

(NCAA) Division I teams that were not selected to participate in the 2009 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. The 72nd annual tournament began on March 17 on campus sites and ended on April 2 at

Madison Square Garden Madison Square Garden, colloquially known as The Garden or by its initials MSG, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in New York City. It is located in Midtown Manhattan between Seventh and Eighth avenues from 31st to 33rd Street, above Pennsylva ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, with

Penn State #Redirect Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campu ...

winning the final 69–63 over Baylor.

Participants

Automatic qualifiers

The following teams won their conference regular season title, but failed to win conference post season tournaments. Therefore, they were not awarded their respective conference's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. When they did not receive at-large selections to the NCAA tournament either, they automatically qualified for the 2009 NIT.

Seedings

Bracket

''Played on the home court of the higher-seeded team (except #4 Miami (FL) at #5 Providence)''

Semifinals and finals

Played at

on March 31 and April 2 * denotes each overtime played

Game summaries

NIT Championship

The Penn State Nittany Lions faced off against the Baylor Bears in the NIT Championship game. The Nittany Lions won the matchup 69–63, aided by

Jamelle Cornley Jamelle Cornley (born April 18, 1987) is an American professional basketball player for Club Malvín of the Liga Uruguaya de Básquetbol in Uruguay. He played collegiately at Penn State. He played as an import for the Rain or Shine Elasto Paint ...

's 18 points. In a four-point deficit at the half, the Lions went on a 7–1 spurt to take a 2-point lead at the beginning of the second. After the Bears tied it at 37, Penn State made three consecutive threes from which Baylor could not recover.

References

{{2009 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament navbox National Invitation National Invitation Tournament 2000s in Manhattan National Invitation Tournament Basketball in New York City College sports in New York City Madison Square Garden National Invitation Tournament National Invitation Tournament Sports competitions in New York City Sports in Manhattan