Men’s basketball has been selected for the inaugural College Basketball Crown tournament, where the team is set to face off in the first round against Boise State on March 31 in Las Vegas, the University announced Monday.
The Crown is a new men’s basketball tournament of just 16 teams, with automatic bids given to teams from the Big East, Big 12 and Big Ten with the rest being at-large bids given to other conferences. GW will play its first postseason basketball since 2017, when the team was eliminated in the second round of the College Basketball Invitational.
Out of the 16-team field, more than half of the team’s come from power conferences, including Georgetown, who will play Washington State in the first round. GW is the lone Atlantic 10 school to play in the tournament, as six teams from the conference will be playing in the National Invitational Tournament, set to begin on Tuesday, and VCU being the lone bid for March Madness.
Following the team’s loss to George Mason in the A-10 Championships on Friday, Head Coach Chris Caputo said he thought postseason play would be an important “step” for the program.
“This group of guys, the synergy that they had this year, I think the sum of their parts are better than the individual pieces,” Caputo said after Friday’s game. “They deserve to play in the postseason, and I think that’ll be great for our program and great for our we have a number of returns.”
Boise State was named one of the First Four Out of March Madness and has a 44 NET rating compared to GW’s 124. GW has the second lowest NET out of the field, ahead of Tulane, who ranks at 145.
The University release states that there is an NIL prize fund of $500,000 for semifinalists and finalists and the tournament will help to give GW athletes exposure on a national level.
“The Crown creates an opportunity for many student-athletes to compete in the postseason that didn’t previously exist, opening an avenue for greater exposure and to compete on the highest stage in front of a national audience,” the release says.
The tournament will be played entirely in Las Vegas between the MGM Grand Garden Arena and the TMobile Arena, with all games aired on FS1 or Fox.
