Time was when an 18-13 University of Hawai'i men's basketball team could be fairly certain it was going to receive a bid to the National Invitation Tournament on Selection Sunday.

But not today.

When the new-look NIT announces its selections on ESPN2 today, the 'Bows will be a definite — and acknowledged — long shot to join the 32-team field, one last and, perhaps, pointed reminder to UH's outgoing head coach Riley Wallace of how the college game he's been involved in for more than 30 years has changed,

Longer, perhaps, than the unsuccessful 25-foot shot Matt Lojeski put up at the buzzer in the 73-70 loss to Utah State in Thursday's opener at the Western Athletic Conference Tournament in Las Cruces, N.M. "It might not be over, but it probably is," Lojeski said.

Eight times in its history UH has found its way into the NIT, seven of them trying to replicate the wonder of that first eye-opening trip to Madison Square Garden in 1971. Every time the 'Bows have won 18 games or more —and haven't gotten an NCAA bid — they've been welcomed by the NIT. Once, UH even went at 17-12.

The NIT has long occupied a place close to Hawai'i's hoops heart. It has, for the longest time, held more import here than the consolation prize it has represented to everyone else. Its name resonates with history for this program. Indeed, it was that 1971 trip in aloha print shorts that went a long way to putting Hawai'i sports on the map, validating the Fabulous Five team that went 23-5.

The next year, 1972, UH got its first NCAA invitation, quite a feat considering the 'Bows were an independent and the NCAA Tournament was but a 24-team field in those days. That's what the appearance in the previous year's 16-team NIT set the stage for.

It was a return to the NIT in 1988-89 that marked a return of the program to the postseason from the 15-year shadow of NCAA sanctions.

UH was also good to the NIT, which was run as a for-profit operation — its only, mostly. Fans jammed the Blaisdell Center for California and packed the Stan Sheriff Center for Jerry Tarkanian and Chris Herren.

But college basketball's oldest postseason tournament has changed a lot since the 'Bows and NIT last got together in 2003-04. No longer is it owned by the founding Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association, the five-school New York entity that operated it from 1938 to 2005. To make the NIT's antitrust lawsuit go away, the NCAA acquired it in 2005 for $56.5 million — $40.5 million plus $16 million in damages — putting its brand on the operation.

Now it is run out of Indianapolis just like the NCAA Tournament. It does not have the same selection committee but operates from the same blueprint, using the Ratings Percentage Index, top-50 wins and other NCAA Tournament yardsticks. Wallace, stepping down after 20 years as UH's longest-serving head coach, longs for the days when personal relationships like the one UH had with NIT director Jack Powers could carry the day. He mourns the changes and decries "NCAA politics" that come with NCAA ownership.

"It is not the NIT like of old," Wallace said. "Hawai'i, I would say, yes, we were definitely in, if it were owned by the NIT. But the NCAA has it now and you have a different committee-type thing that looks at it. And if you look at most big-time ex-coaches (who form the committee), they are going to pick big-time (programs) first. And that's not gonna be the WAC ... though it should be."

The 'Bows could have helped themselves a lot by beating Utah State in the opener of the WAC Tournament. They could have left the committee little room to look past them if not for that still-hard-to-comprehend 76-75 loss at Idaho or a couple of the seven games they lost by three points or less.

"We deserve, probably, to be there (in the NIT), 'cause there will be some teams there a lot worse than putting Hawai'i in there," Wallace said.

In the "old NIT" Wallace maintains, "I think Hawai'i would be a lock right now. But, at best, it is a hope."

One last reminder on the way out the door of how the landscape changed during his tenure.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.