Stanford Men’s Basketball to compete in College Basketball Crown
On Monday, it was announced that Stanford men’s basketball will be playing postseason basketball in the College Basketball Crown, an eight team tournament which will be held from April 1st to April 5th in Las Vegas, Nevada. Stanford will open up against West Virginia on Thursday, April 2nd at 5:00 PM PT on FS1.
Stanford went 20-12 overall and 9-9 in the ACC, missing the NCAA tournament despite having five Quad 1 wins. While most assumed they would go to the NIT if they ended up missing the NCAA tournament, the College Basketball Crown offers a unique opportunity for the Cardinal to play for $300K in NIL money. Runner up gets $100K and winning one game gets a team $50K. In this new era of college athletics, the more money you can have to win, the better.
Link: College Basketball Crown Bracket
On top of offering the NIL money, the College Basketball Crown also offers Stanford a chance to get some more practices in and play against a field of exclusively high major opponents. That’s a bonus that the NIT doesn’t guarantee even though it’s the more historical tournament. Last year’s winner Nebraska went on to get a 4 seed in the NCAA tournament this year. While it’s as small of a sample size as you can get since last year was the first year, Nebraska shows that you can use the College Basketball Crown as a spring board to a tournament run the following year.
It’ll be interesting to see how this tournament goes for Stanford. It’s obviously a bummer that their star freshman Ebuka Okorie won’t play in the NCAA tournament this year, but he will at least get a national stage to compete on as every tournament game is televised on either FS1 or Fox. That’s something that makes this tournament worthwhile. And then hey, after being picked to finish 17th in the ACC, the fact that Stanford finished 10th in the league and made a postseason tournament for the second straight season is something that strongly indicates the program is heading in the right direction under Kyle Smith.
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