Men’s basketball Head Coach Chris Caputo was an assistant coach at the University of Miami when his team lost to Stanford University in the finals of the National Invitational Tournament in 2015.

The next year, the team earned a bid to the NCAA Tournament as a No. 3 seed and made the Sweet Sixteen, losing to the eventual champions, Villanova University. With a trip to the newly formed College Basketball Crown Tournament in Las Vegas on March 31 — the first time the team will play in a postseason tournament since 2017 — Caputo said he’s trying to emulate Miami’s “progression” in Foggy Bottom.

“In my experience, teams that do well in these tournaments, NIT and now the Crown, they’re poised to build some confidence for the future,” Caputo said. 

In his third year at the helm of the program, the team finished more than .500 in overall play for the first time, going 21-12 ahead of their first Crown matchup against Boise State University. The 21 wins are the team’s most since 2016, when the Mike Lonergan-coached team went 28-10 and won the NIT.

Caputo said competing in the Crown is a natural step in the program’s growth, especially considering the notoriety of the event, being nationally televised and containing reputable basketball programs, like Georgetown and Villanova universities. 

This will be the first year of the Crown tournament, which Fox Sports created. The field of 16 teams includes automatic bids given to the top teams from the Big East, Big 12 and Big Ten who did not make the NCAA tournament and at-large bids to teams from other conferences. Athletes will play all games in Las Vegas and the tournament will feature a NIL prize of $500,000 for semi finalists and finalists.

“To get invited by Fox to their event in Las Vegas, with a field filled with big, power conference brands and then somebody like Boise, who’s been a perennial NCAA team, we feel like we’ve gained some momentum behind some of the success of this year, given where the program was,” Caputo said.

Their first-round opponent, Boise State, has a 44 NET ranking — the highest in the Crown field and currently above teams like those at Xavier and Vanderbilt universities who picked up at-large bids to the NCAA tournament.

Coming from the Mountain West Conference, Boise State has made the NCAA tournament three of the past four years, despite spending less than $5 million dollars annually on the program, on par with the last year of available data from GW’s spending. Every NCAA tournament team this year above a 10 seed spends at least $6 million annually on its basketball programs, according to Sportico.

The NCAA men’s basketball selection committee named the 24-10 Broncos one of the first four teams out of the NCAA tournament field, picked over in favor of teams from tougher conferences but worse records, like the University of North Carolina, who entered the tournament 22-13. 

Caputo said he’s trying to mirror the recent success from a mid-major program, like Boise State, at GW. 

“That’s a program that has been to three NCAA tournaments in a row, that has competed at the very top of a great league in the Mountain West,” Caputo said. “It’s a measuring stick for us to see where we are against a program that is always competing and reaching an NCAA tournament.”

After George Mason knocked GW out of the Atlantic 10 Championships a week ago, Caputo said he knew the team would be in consideration for postseason play because of its strong record, whether in the NIT or the Crown.

Following the Friday loss, Caputo said the Crown was in contact over the weekend, telling them they’d be “100 percent” interested. Despite the loss in the quarterfinals of the A-10 tournament, Caputo said he thought the team had a good year with its 9-9 finish in A-10 play. 

The team entered conference play 11-2 before a largely up-and-down set of games that included impressive wins against Dayton and Saint Louis but losses to Richmond and La Salle. In the end, its 9-9 finish was good for seventh in the conference, which marked only the second time since 2017 the Revs finished at least .500, the first being a 10-8 finish in 2023.

“Two out of the last eight [years] we’ve been .500 or above in the A-10,” Caputo said. “So it’s been a year of some really good progress for us, but I felt like you really wanted to then get to the postseason as well.”

With over two weeks between the March 14 A-10 departure and the March 31 Crown tipoff, Caputo said he and his staff have been balancing practice with conditioning and rest for the players, giving them one week off before a full week of practice leading up to the Crown.

On top of this, he said he has “a number of guys” monitoring the transfer portal, which is set to open Monday. 

“If you’re going to be a program that talks about competing at a high level in competition, you’re gonna have to show up to compete when you get asked to, and that’s what we’re gonna do,” Caputo said. “But we’re also gonna compete in the portal.”

Caputo has been active in the portal throughout his time at GW, including this past offseason, when the team added former Providence College forward Rafael Castro, who led the team in scoring with 14.1 points per game this year and earned an all A-10 Second Team spot.

Notable transfers away from GW include guard Maximus Edwards, who transferred to Duquesne just one season removed from winning A-10 Rookie of the Year.

Out of the nine players that averaged at least 10 minutes per game this season, only two — graduate students guard Gerald Drumgoole Jr. and forward Sean Hansen — were playing in their final year of eligibility. Caputo said finding success with a younger team is a positive sign as he looks to continue building the program. 

“We’re not a team that’s one of the older teams in the league or even the country, and yet here we are with 21 wins and a postseason opportunity,” Caputo said. “So I think we’re on track for where I want to be, and we’re obviously going to be pushing forward.”

In a pool that includes programs like Georgetown, Villanova and Cincinnati, who have 17 NCAA Final Four appearances between them, Caputo said playing on a big stage like the Crown is important for his program and his players.

“Twenty wins, good record in the league, key wins, postseason — all these things are starting to show a ray of hope for what the program could be going forward,” Caputo said. “We’re proud of that. And we want an opportunity to go on national television, represent our great University and go do a little bit of damage.”