SE: Purple and Black Ready for Second Run at TBT
Jul 14, 2017 | Men's Basketball, Sports Extra
In last year's The Basketball Tournament, injuries, family emergencies and various other conflicts shrunk the Purple and Black's roster to five players. The team of mostly K-State alums advanced past the first round despite the limited bodies before falling in its second battle.
On Saturday, Purple and Black looks to start a much deeper run with a full roster in this year's TBT. Purple and Black's 10-man team consists of former Wildcats like Jacob Pullen, Thomas Gipson, Jordan Henriquez, Martavious Irving, Curtis Kelly, Jamar Samuels and Shane Southwell.
More specifically, this roster includes the program's all-time leading scorer (Pullen), two key pieces from the Wildcats' 2010 Elite Eight team (Pullen and Kelly), two members of K-State's all-time winningest class (Irving and Henriquez) and three 1,000-point scorers (Pullen, Samuels, Gipson).
"Going into this tournament, having the full collection of guys that we've put together, I think it's a great opportunity to make something happen," said Henriquez, who holds K-State's career shot blocks record with 210. "I think we have a good chance to win it all, as long as everybody shows up. We'll all be in shape, prepared and ready to go."
"I'm really excited, especially because I couldn't play last year," added Gipson, coming off a league title in France earlier this summer. "We just want to do better than last year. I think that we will just because the dates are coordinated with everybody and everybody's on the same page."
Purple and Black, a four-seed in the Midwest Regional, opens up this year's TBT against the Canton Bulldogs on Saturday at 9 a.m., at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. The game will be streamed live on ESPN3 and the WatchESPN app, starting what the former Wildcats hope will be one of five steps toward the title game on August 3, in Baltimore, Maryland, where the game will be nationally televised on ESPN and the winner will bring home $2 million.
"We usually try to get in touch and see each other in the summer but now we get the chance to play together and in something competitive for $2 million," Southwell, who was playing professionally in Australia during last year's TBT, said. "That's amazing."
The money is an obvious incentive to play, but the former Wildcats pointed out the time together as the biggest benefit of TBT.
When they played at K-State, Irving said, seeing one another was as simple as gathering at one person's house. Now, with professional careers and home bases spread out across the world and country, respectively, it's far more complicated to get together.
"I just think it's really special for me to be able to get back and just to be around the guys because it's a special group," said Irving, who won a league title in Indonesia in May. "That's really important for me to be able to be around the guys and be able to play with them, too."
"I'm excited to see my guys more than anything. The $2 million is a plus," Kelly added while he was back in Manhattan for the first time in more than six years. "To come here, work out with them and get the chemistry back has been phenomenal."
While this year's bracket started with 64 teams (not including play-in games), very few of those squads are as strongly connected to one university as Purple and Black. Even more, K-State's group of alums spans five different graduating classes and two different coaches.
"I think it says a lot about K-State and the community, because everybody wants to come back," Gipson said. "Everybody wants to meet up."
Kelly, who was not on last year's Purple and Black roster, said it was school pride that convinced him to join on this time.
"I hope fans notice what we're doing, notice that we're not just doing it for ourselves. We're doing it because we have pride in our school. We have pride in K-State. That's the biggest part," Kelly said. "When (Henriquez) and (Irving) talked to me, they talked a lot about pride. That fed into me. This year I definitely had to play."
Last year, Henriquez said having K-State fans cheer them on was an added bonus to the team's first TBT. He hopes that support will follow them again.
"It was fun. It wasn't like playing in Bramlage, of course, but just having people out there, supporting us and taking time out of their day and weekend to come watch some of us play, it meant a lot to all of us," he said. "I know we do have a nice fan base in Chicago because of the fans that came out last year, so hopefully they'll be able to make it to Peoria."
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