“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”
Rutgers men’s basketball has accepted an invitation to the College Basketball Crown, according to a post made by the team’s X account. The College Basketball Crown is a postseason tournament held in Las Vegas, Nevada, that features eight teams competing throughout a four-day tournament, with the reward being a trophy and an NIL donation made to their program.
The Scarlet Knights are set to take on Creighton in the first round of the tournament
on Thursday, April 2nd, at 10:30 pm. The winner of this game will move on to face the winner of West Virginia- Stanford.
The College Basketball Crown tournament debuted last season and featured 16 teams. Since this tournament is financially incentivised, the winning team of last year’s tournament received $300,000 out of a total pool of $500,000. While the tournament will still be incentivised this year, the layout will be different as Anschutz Entertainment Group and Fox Sports, the creators of the tournament, have made an attempt at streamlining the tournament and making it a more attractive destination by cutting the overall number of teams that will be competing to 8.
Last season, Nebraska, which won the tournament, received 300,000 dollars in NIL money, while the runner-up UCF received $100,000. Villanova and Boise State each received $50,000 after losing in the semi-finals.
The first round of the tournament will be held on April 1st and 2nd, with the semi-finals taking place on the fourth and the finals taking place on April 5th. The first round will be televised from MGM Grand’s Garden Arena on FS1, while the semi-finals and finals will be televised from T-Mobile Arena on Fox Sports.
This is the first postseason tournament Rutgers will participate in since it hosted the first round of the NIT at the end of the 2022-2023 season.
It should be noted that the Knights were playing some of their best basketball of the season at the end of the year, and doing well in this tournament could ultimately benefit Rutgers in the portal and next season in terms of money; however, it does occur just about one week before the transfer portal opens, and could serve as a negative distraction in that regard if the team does not perform well.
