Summer is typically a slower time in the calendar year for college basketball teams. We’re several months removed from the season. The transfer portal has opened and closed.
In fact, basketball-starved fans are typically in search of how to quench that thirst. While the WNBA is stronger than ever, there isn’t much outside of that.
Well, there are a few other options. Ice Cube’s BIG3 and The Basketball Tournament. Ahh, here we are.
The Basketball Tournament, called TBT, is a winner-take-all 64-team tournament for $1 million that’s been around for about a dozen years. Several of the teams center around former college players who join back together.
Operative words: former college players.
Maybe not so in the future as Green Bay filed a waiver requesting to compete in The Basketball Tournament.
The request was made last week and states that TBT is not under NCAA jurisdiction and is not a legislated exemption. Therefore, the Phoenix argue that participation in the tournament can serve the same role for a program as a foreign summer trip that teams are allowed to participate in once every four years.
“The idea of undergraduate teams or student-athletes participating and competing against retired players or current professionals overseas or any number of other types of teams that we get is really appealing to us,” TBT CEO Jon Mugar said, according to ESPN. “We have a long track record of working with and partnering with universities through alumni teams, and now it makes a lot of sense to do that through their actual teams.”
Horizon League commissioner Julie Roe Lach put her support behind Green Bay’s participation in TBT. The 2025 tournament is slated to run from July 18-Aug. 3.
“When you play overseas, these teams that go to France, Spain, Belgium, whatever, those aren’t NCAA-sanctioned games,” Green Bay coach Doug Gottlieb said. “So, the NCAA’s argument is, ‘Hey, in summer competition, you can’t play these games in the United States. They’re not NCAA-sanctioned.’ So, if I played this exact same game three hours north of here in Canada, it’d be OK. It doesn’t make sense.”
These trips abroad to play games can become expensive, especially for a mid-major program. Reminder that Gottlieb played professionally in Russia, Israel and France.
Green Bay – which won just four games (tied for the second fewest in DI) in Gottlieb’s first season – filed a similar motion last year, but it was denied. That decision came too late for the team to appeal.
