While a nation of passionate college basketball fans combed the just-announced bracket of the NCAA men’s tournament on March 12, a first-time occurrence was wrapping up in the Lincoln Room on the second floor of the downtown Indianapolis Marriott.

Former college coaching icons and administrators of the game were constructing the first postseason National Invitation Tournament field since the NCAA began operation of the event.

C.M. Newton, the former head coach at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, and Vanderbilt University, and former athletics director at the University of Kentucky, chaired the six-person panel, which also included Division I men’s basketball all-time winningest coach Dean Smith, Jack Powers, Carroll Williams, Reggie Minton and Don DeVoe. They were in charge of selecting and seeding the 40-team field.

Newton said the NIT selection committee used the same procedures that the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee uses to select its championship bracket.

“The thing I’m most pleased with was how closely we worked together,” said Newton, former chair of the Division I men’s committee. “We did a good job of being fair and objective. Consideration was given to RPI, season record, road wins and all those things. The seeding and bracketing worked out well.  We (took) the best of what the NCAA championship does, and we’re going to have a good basketball event.”

Laptops and mounds of information were at the fingertips of every committee member, just like in the NCAA championship selection room.

NIT selection committee members began reviewing data  Friday and eventually had the field set around 6 p.m. Sunday after receiving final word about which teams would definitely be available. The final part of the puzzle was to construct a television schedule on ESPN’s family of networks.

“Each of us on this committee is of the age where we remember the NIT with some real fondness,” Newton said. “We’re excited because we think it’s a unique opportunity to take what has been a strong part of college basketball and make it even better. I’m very excited about this.”

Powers has been the executive director of the NIT since 1988. The NCAA acquired the NIT postseason tournament and the November event, now called the NIT Season Tip-Off, for $56.5 million last August.

“The NCAA is in charge of the preseason and postseason, and they have totally committed themselves to making a bigger and better tournament,” Powers said. “With the committee they’ve formed here, this is a big step. They have some people with a lot of basketball knowledge. They are from different parts of the country and represent a diversified group.”

All six committee members believe that protecting conference regular-season champions is one of the most important rules implemented since the NCAA took over the event. In the past, regular-season conference champions that were upset in their league tournaments had no postseason guarantees.

“If we don’t do anything else, we’ve done the right thing in that,” said Minton, the deputy executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches.

Minton also praised Newton’s leadership.

“C.M. got us through the minefield without any of us blowing up the process,” Minton said. “No one in our business is more respected than C.M. That’s why it is easy for him to run a process like this. All of us respect him so much.”

DeVoe, who coached Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University to the 1973 NIT title, was named to the committee after Newton and he crossed paths at a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, game earlier this season. DeVoe replaced former Purdue University coach Gene Keady, who is now on the staff of the Toronto Raptors.

Newton said he plans to be a part of the committee again.

“It was a great experience for all of us,” he said. “We’re looking forward to refining it and making it better. You are talking about a bunch of old basketball coaches who are computer-illiterate. I was ready to get a yellow legal pad out, but it was great that we didn’t have to.”