JHX Hoops has turned a strong tournament run into something bigger: one more win and the Kansas alumni will be playing for The Basketball Tournament title.
That chance comes Wednesday night in Lexington, Kentucky, where JHX Hoops meets La Familia in a semifinal with a 6 p.m. CT tipoff on FS1. The winner moves on to the championship game and gets the right to host the final, with the $2 million winner-take-all prize now within reach.
The Jayhawks alumni arrive after knocking out defending champion AfterShocks in a physical 64-59 quarterfinal Monday night. It was the latest step in the best stretch the team has put together in its history, and the formula has been clear: Zeke Mayo and Frank Mason III have carried the load.
Mayo has scored 25 points in each of JHX Hoops’ last two games, including Monday’s win over the AfterShocks. Mason, meanwhile, has been the closer, drilling three straight Elam Ending game-winning baskets and becoming the first player to do that in TBT since 2019.
JHX Hoops has also gotten important minutes from Jacob Hanna, whose defense and timely scoring have helped steady the group throughout the tournament. That has mattered even more because the team has been without Marcus Garrett and had to navigate much of Monday’s quarterfinal with a shortened bench after multiple in-game ejections.
La Familia brings a different kind of challenge. The Kentucky alumni are back in the TBT Final Four for the second time in three years, and they’ve been powered by Archie Goodwin’s surge over the last two rounds.
Goodwin scored 22 points in La Familia’s first-round win over Louisville alumni team The Ville, then followed that with 30 points and five 3-pointers in a 70-66 quarterfinal victory over Boeheim’s Army. Darryl Morsell has been steady as well, averaging 14.0 points and 7.3 rebounds per game, while Andrew Harrison, Willie Cauley-Stein, Marcus Lee and Kahlil Whitney give La Familia a deep roster.
JHX coach Sherron Collins knows the assignment gets tougher away from home after his team played its first four games in Kansas. But the path is simple now: beat La Familia, and JHX Hoops is one step from the championship.
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The alumni bracket run for JHX Hoops had all the usual TBT drama, but the bigger story out of Sunday was how quickly a heated game turned into a survival test. A second-quarter altercation sent multiple players to the sideline for good, and from there both teams were forced to play the rest of the way with just six available bodies, turning every possession into a grind and every mistake into a bigger deal.
Sherron Collins said the officials handled the ejections fairly, and Kansas fans will care less about the chaos than about what it means next: JHX Hoops is still alive and moving on with a chance to keep the alumni run going. The next challenge comes against Kentuckys alumni team, and after a game like this, the Jayhawks know the margin for error in this tournament can disappear fast. [Read more 🡒]
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Kansas State still stands out as the one trip that can define the whole thing. Lance Leipold has yet to solve that rivalry, and Kansas has not won it since 2009, which gives the matchup its own weight before anyone even starts talking about personnel. With Collin Klein now in the picture on the other sideline, the game already carries the feel of the biggest one on the calendar, even if the final shape of both teams is still months from being clear. [Read more 🡒]