Mass St. TBT team to face Colorado State alumni in first round

By Henry Greenstein     Jun 26, 2024

article image Mark Kuhlmann/TBT
Mass Street head coach Marcus Morris looks on during a game at Charles Koch Arena in Wichita on July 19, 2023.

The bracket for The Basketball Tournament was revealed Wednesday morning, and the Mass St. team of Kansas alumni has earned a No. 2 seed and will take on seventh-seeded Ram Up in the first round.

Ram Up is a team of Colorado State alumni that has suffered first-round losses in each of its two TBT runs, whereas Mass St. went 2-1 in its lone appearance last summer.

The game will take place at 7 p.m. on July 20 at Charles Koch Arena in Wichita and will be available to watch on “TBT Live,” after TBT announced on Monday that it will broadcast all non-Fox games for free on its website. The 64-team bracket awards its winner a $1 million prize.

The Wichita regional, which includes Mass St., also features alumni teams featuring players from Colorado, Kansas State and Wichita State, as well as the No. 3 seed Florida TNT and No. 6 seed LA Cheaters (which is affiliated with the Drew League). If Mass St. wins against Ram Up, it will take on the victor of those two teams’ matchup in the second round on July 22 at 6 p.m.; the regional final is two more days later at 8 p.m.

Mass St. currently features former KU players Silvio De Sousa, Frank Mason III, Mario Little, Malik Newman, Thomas Robinson, Jamari Traylor, Lagerald Vick and Kevin Young. Marcus Garrett was announced as a participant on social media but has not been added to the online roster, nor was he featured in a list that TBT emailed to media on Wednesday.

That email, however, did include the news that Marcus Morris will return as the team’s head coach for the second year in a row, and also suggested that more players will be announced in the coming weeks. Travis Releford and Tyshawn Taylor are serving as the team’s organizers.

Ram Up’s roster includes Patrick Cartier, DJ Cooper, Tarekeyi Edogi, Andy Ogide, Emmanuel Omogbo, Kendle Moore, Joseph Palmer, Larry Plummer, Joel Scott, Greg Smith, Rob Upshaw III and Terrico White.

KU and CSU have only ever met once at the collegiate level, a 76-55 victory for KU in Kansas City, Missouri, during the 2010-11 season.

Last year, Mass St. defeated a team of former Division III basketball players in the first round and then a Missouri alumni squad in the second, both on Elam Ending game-winners by Robinson, before losing to eventual tournament champion Heartfire in its third game.

This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Emmanuel Omogbo’s first name.

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Written By Henry Greenstein

Henry is the sports editor at the Lawrence Journal-World and KUsports.com, and serves as the KU beat writer while managing day-to-day sports coverage. He previously worked as a sports reporter at The Bakersfield Californian and is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis (B.A., Linguistics) and Arizona State University (M.A., Sports Journalism). Though a native of Los Angeles, he has frequently been told he does not give off "California vibes," whatever that means.