After two straight years in The Basketball Tournament, UConn’s alumni team won’t be part of this year’s field.
The “Stars of Storrs” had been in the event the past two summers, but the setup around TBT looks very different now. What was a 60-plus team tournament with a $1 million prize has been trimmed down to 16 teams this year, and that smaller field has made it tougher for alumni groups like UConn’s to get in.
This year’s field includes eight alumni teams and eight non-alumni teams. Among the alumni groups already in action are Louisville’s and Kentucky’s teams, which opened the event this past weekend, along with Syracuse’s “Boeheim’s Army” and Seton Hall’s “Hall In,” who played Tuesday night.
The alumni bracket now uses a best-of-three series in the first round before moving to a one-game semifinal and a one-game final. The winner of that side then meets the winner of the non-alumni bracket in the overall championship game, where the purse has been bumped to $2 million.
TBT has gone through several format changes since launching in 2014, with prize money at different points ranging from $500,000 to $2 million and the number of teams shifting from year to year.
As for why UConn isn’t back, the reduced number of teams is the clearest reason. There’s just less room in the field. The roster rules also make things trickier, since each team can only carry four non-alumni players, which means the alumni core has to be strong enough to make the whole thing work.
Elsewhere in UConn Athletics, the football team will meet with the media for the first time on Thursday at the school’s Media Day. It will also be the first Media Day for new head coach Jason Candle, who replaced Jim Mora after Mora left for Colorado State. The Huskies open the season Sept. 5 at home against Lafayette.
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Karaban also made it clear he is not viewing Sacramento as just another stop, but as a place where winning habits have to be established and protected. His Summer League run offered an early glimpse of that transition, with the rookie showing steady improvement after a rough opening stretch and flashing the kind of versatility that made him such a valuable piece at UConn, even if the bigger question now is how quickly that mindset translates once the games start to count. [Read more 🡒]
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For Fagnano, the opportunity is rooted in the steady climb he made in college, where he spent seven seasons and started two years at UConn before finishing with a productive final campaign. Baltimore has not handed out many openings behind Jackson, but every roster move around the position changes the math a little, and this one gives Fagnano a better chance to keep pushing toward a spot. [Read more 🡒]
UConn Basketball Is Losing A Trusted Link Between Two Title Eras
Tom Moores run in Storrs stretched across nearly four decades in coaching, and for 21 of those years he was one of the most trusted figures around UConn mens basketball. He worked under both Jim Calhoun and Dan Hurley, helping bridge two very different title eras before moving into a full-time general manager role as the program kept evolving around him.
Moores departure leaves more than an empty chair in the staff room. UConn will now begin a national search for his replacement, and the program is losing someone who helped shape championship teams and connect the roster-building between generations. His next step is not fully settled, which adds another layer to a change that already feels significant for a program that has leaned on continuity as much as success. [Read more 🡒]