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Five teams from Big East included in NIT bracket

The 2019 NIT bracket includes five teams from the Big East in its 32-team field.

Butler, Creighton, Georgetown, Providence and Xavier will all have the chance to continue their seasons in the secondary tournament, which starts Tuesday.

With Villanova, Marquette, Seton Hall and St. John's all making the NCAA tournament and DePaul playing in the College Basketball Invitational, all 10 Big East teams will be involved in postseason play.

Alabama, Indiana, TCU and UNC Greensboro are the top four seeds in the NIT by virtue of their being the first four teams left out of the NCAA tournament.

The 2-seeds include ACC rivals NC State and Clemson -- who had the two highest rankings in the NCAA's NET metric among teams left out of the NCAA tournament -- as well as Texas and Creighton.

Memphis and Furman join Georgetown and Xavier as 3-seeds, and the 4-seeds are Colorado, Davidson, Nebraska and Providence.

Teams seeded 1 through 4 will host first-round games, and the higher seed will continue to host through the quarterfinals, unless there is a site conflict.

The last four teams standing will have the opportunity to play at Madison Square Garden in New York, with the semifinals on April 2 and the final two days later.

The No. 5 seeds, which will start the NIT on the road, are Arkansas, Butler, Dayton, and Lipscomb.

The lowest-seeded at-large teams to make the field were San Diego, Toledo and Wichita State, which received No. 6 seeds.

Harvard, the last 6-seed, was one of 10 teams to receive automatic bids by winning their conferences' regular-season titles, along with Campbell, Hofstra, Lipscomb, Loyola-Chicago, Norfolk State, Sam Houston State, South Dakota State, St. Francis (Pa.) and Wright State.