Purdue Alumni Team May Appear in The Basketball Tournament

Some pretty big news today for Purdue basketball fans:

For those who are not familiar, The Basketball Tournament was was started in 2014 and it is a hybrid of fan-constructed teams with college alumni that are put together in a 64 team single elimination tournament. The format is a winner-take-all format and after an initial prize of $500,000 in 2014 it has expended to $2 million for the winning team. Here is the official format per the wikipedia:

Teams in TBT are arranged by the general manager, sometimes based on which schools the players attended and which teams they had experience competing for. While the tournament has had as many as 97 teams, and had 72 in 2018, the 2019 edition started with 64.^[2]

In the current format, adopted in 2019, the 64 teams are divided into eight regionals, all of which are seeded. The 2019 edition was the first in which each regional was hosted by one of the participating teams; these teams were pre-selected before the open application period.^[2] The championship prize money was originally $500,000 in 2014,^[1] was increased to $1 million in 2015, and has been $2 million since 2016. The prize money goes to the winning team’s personnel, and an additional 10% of that amount ($200,000) goes to its top fans.^[3] The 2019 tournament was the first to offer prizes other than the main $2 million prize; each regional winner received 25% of their region’s ticket proceeds.

So yes, you can help put the team together! Some Purdue players have played on other teams in the past such as Willie Deane and Jon Octeus, but this is the first time a Purdue specific team is being organized, and as fans we can get on board and even win part of hte prize money if they win it all!

Obviously, we can only use players as they currently are and none of the NBA guys. Unless we find a spare time machine we can’t go back and get Boiler legends like Glenn Robinson, Rick Mount, Joe Barry Carroll, and Matt ten Dam. We could have some fun though with the following team:

Robbie Hummel (assuming he can do this and go to the Olympics for 3x3).

JaJuan Johnson

Lewis Jackson

Ryne Smith

PJ Thompson

Isaac Haas

Dakota Mathias

Vince Edwards

Ryan Cline

DJ Byrd

AJ Hammons

and more.

Last season’s winner was Carmen’s Crew, a team made up of mostly former Ohio State players like David Lighty, Jon Diebler, Aaron Craft, William Buford, and more.

Let’s make this happen and maybe even H&R here can be the general manager.