Head coach Steve Wojciechowski and Marquette finished the season with a 20-13 record. Credit: Michael McLoone for the Journal Sentinel

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Unlike the bracket for the NCAA Tournament, the NIT field didn't leak out ahead of time on Sunday night. That meant Marquette had to sweat it out until the last minute, when the final teams were unveiled and the Golden Eagles (20-13) were not included in the field.

Just like that, their season 2015-'16 season came to a close without a postseason berth for the third straight season after making eight consecutive NCAA Tournaments. It's the longest postseason drought in the state, with Wisconsin, UW-Milwaukee and UW-Green Bay all making the NCAA Tournament in the past three years.

"We felt like we put ourselves in a position to earn a bid and our numbers stacked up well with some of the teams that made it," head coach Steve Wojciechowski said. "Guys were all obviously very disappointed. That's a hard lesson to learn — we don't want to put the fate of our season and postseason play in somebody else's hands."

Even without a berth in the NIT, a field that features a record 15 regular-season conference champions that made it via automatic berth, Marquette could have decided to extend its season. The College Basketball Invitational and inaugural Vegas 16 tournaments offer teams the opportunity to pay for inclusion in their brackets.

Wojciechowski said the program didn't have much discussion about entering either of those tournaments.

"Basically we've been going at it since mid-July with the practices, the foreign tour (to Italy)," Wojciechowski said. "Our guys are exhausted....If we weren't going to be invited to an invitation tournament then it's the end of the season."

While Wojciechowski said the program didn't spend much time entertaining the pay-to-play tournaments, he noted that wouldn't necessarily be the program's stance in future years. Often those tournaments can be seen as opportunities for young teams like Marquette's to gain experience, but for this season the fit wasn't right.

"We were starting three freshmen for the majority of the year," he said. "Our young guys gained a lot of experience over the course of the season. I don't look at those tournaments as something where you're going to gain much more experience than we did over the course of the season.

"With (Matt) Heldt being injured, we're thinner and we need to give our guys a chance to recoup and have a great spring and summer."

Freshman forward Henry Ellenson's decision whether or not to declare for the NBA draft looms as an important aspect heading into the off-season, but Wojciechowski's mind wasn't on that Sunday night when he met with his team following the NIT selection show. Instead, he focused on the successes of this year and the promise he sees in the future.

"Our guys made a lot of progress over the course of the year," Wojciechowski said. "Our program showed improvement as a whole and we had a number of individual players who made a jump with their games.

"There are some things to take away from the season that we should be really proud of and at the same time we know we have a lot of work to still do."