Big Blue Nation gets one more summer night at Historic Memorial Coliseum, and the prize is bigger than bragging rights. La Familia, Kentucky’s alumni team, meets JHX Hoops, Kansas’ alumni squad, on Wednesday night in the TBT 2026 Alumni Championship, with the winner moving to the doorstep of a $2 million payday.
The matchup also comes with a channel change. La Familia’s semifinal aired on FOX, but Wednesday’s title game shifts to FS1, so fans will need to track it down there before tip.
La Familia has taken the long road to get here. Kentucky needed all three games to get past The Ville in the opening round, then edged Boeheim’s Army 70-66 on Sunday at Memorial Coliseum.
Archie Goodwin scored a game-high 30, Willie Cauley-Stein controlled the paint, and Kahlil Whitney finished it with a putback of a Goodwin miss to seal the Elam Ending. Kentucky entered the untimed finish down three and closed on an 8-2 run to pull it out.
Kansas has been just as dangerous, and maybe even a little more dramatic. JHX Hoops rallied from an early deficit to beat Kansas State’s Purple Reign 2-1 in the opening round, then went to Wichita and knocked off defending champion AfterShocks 64-59 on Monday night.
That one got heated. A mid-game skirmish emptied both benches, but the finish belonged to Kansas again.
Frank Mason III drilled the game-winning 3 in the Elam Ending, firing it from the Wichita State logo for his third straight Elam Ending game-winner. Zeke Mayo led JHX with 25.
Both rosters are loaded with familiar names. La Familia features Cauley-Stein, Andrew Harrison, Goodwin, Whitney, Marcus Lee and DeAndre Liggins, along with Darryl Morsell, Sean McNeil, Chris Coffey and James Mainor-Bell. Jon Hood, who was part of Kentucky’s 2012 national championship team, is on the bench as the head coach, with Twany Beckham in the front office.
JHX Hoops counters with Mason, Mayo, Jacob Hanna, Mario Chalmers and Carlton Bragg Jr. It’s a veteran, guard-driven group that has already shown it can survive tight games and messy ones, which is exactly the kind of test the Elam Ending tends to reward.
The Kentucky-Kansas connection gives this one an extra layer. Those programs met for the 2012 national championship, when Kentucky’s freshman-heavy team beat Kansas 67-59 in New Orleans for the program’s eighth title. Hood was on that roster.
Now, 14 years later, he gets Kansas again from the sideline.
TBT has a new setup this year: 14 teams, a bracket split between alumni and non-alumni sides, and a $2 million winner-take-all prize. Wednesday’s winner becomes the alumni champion and advances to the tournament final against the last non-alumni team standing, one win from the money.
For La Familia, that means two wins from $2 million, with the first one available at home. And as always, the finish will come under the Elam Ending, when the clock disappears in the fourth quarter, a target score goes up, and somebody has to make the shot that ends it.
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Kentucky Is Ahead Of Rivals But Big Blue Nation Wants One More Move
Mark Pope has Kentucky in a better place than it was a year ago, at least on paper, as he heads into his third season with a roster that already has the Wildcats sitting No. 15 in Jon Rothsteins preseason top 45. More importantly for Big Blue Nation, Kentucky is currently positioned ahead of several familiar measuring-stick programs, including Louisville, Indiana, North Carolina and Kansas, which is the kind of early footing that tends to get attention in Lexington.
Still, the roster may not be finished, and that is where the intrigue lives for Kentucky fans. Pope is continuing to explore one more addition, with the conversation centered on a couple of very different possibilities, including a highly regarded young forward who would need to make a notable leap in class and a veteran wing whose path depends on an eligibility fight under NCAA rules. For a team already drawing respect in the preseason, the last move could be the one that determines whether Kentucky merely looks solid or starts looking like a true threat. [Read more 🡒]
Kahlil Whitney Saw Something Kentucky Fans Needed From This Young Roster
A recent scrimmage between Kentuckys current roster and the alumni group La Familia offered a useful early look at where this young team stands, and Kahlil Whitney came away impressed with several players who could matter once the season starts. Whitney, who has stayed close enough to the program to watch the new group up close, pointed to noticeable growth from the kind of names Kentucky fans have been eager to track, including Malachi Moreno, Zoom Diallo and Braydon Hawthorne.
The setting itself came with a few roster quirks, as both sides were missing pieces and the lineups shifted enough to make the run more about evaluation than final answers. Even so, Whitneys read suggested there is real upside in this group, with Moreno drawing praise for his improvement and Diallo showing the kind of speed and downhill burst that can change the feel of a game. For a Kentucky team trying to sort out its identity early, those are the kinds of observations that tend to stick. [Read more 🡒]