Will always have a soft spot in my heart for this tourney as it helped during a bad time of covid Also fun if you have an alumni team in it
I have no idea what this is. Ya’ll need like real jobs and families and shit so you can be out of touch like me.
64 teams, mostly made up of alumni college teams, compete in a tournament to win $1 million. It’s pretty fun
Always a big fan of this tournament...might try to go to a couple of the Columbus games this year. Love the ELAM endings.
Spoiler A former college basketball star was waiting for his big chance. Then came the accident. Mark SeligJuly 15, 2021 In 2013, A.J. Davis led the James Madison basketball team to a CAA championship. ( /Courtesy of JMU Athletics) To save his life, doctors induced a coma and amputated both of his legs. “I’m thankful he’s alive,” said Devon Moore, Davis’s cousin, close friend and former JMU teammate. “At the end of the day we could be talking about something different. We could be writing his obituary.” Story continues below advertisement On Sunday, Moore will do something Davis yearned to but now can’t: He will lead the Founding Fathers, a squad consisting of mostly JMU alumni, in the Basketball Tournament, the ESPN-televised summer competition with a $1 million prize. Davis, 33, will be on the sideline coaching. To JMU fans, Davis is still remembered as an athletic swingman who harnessed his skills at the perfect time in 2013, carrying the Dukes to their only NCAA tournament in the past 27 years. A bit too casual on defense for his coach’s liking, he started the season in the doghouse, earning limited minutes and even getting suspended for one home game. But he eventually bought in, caught fire down the stretch and earned Colonial Athletic Association tournament MVP honors after scoring 26 points in the championship game. His Dukes won a play-in game and then bowed out against top-seeded Indiana in the round of 64. Story continues below advertisement Once Davis graduated from the Harrisonburg, Va., school, he began his worldwide odyssey with the Sioux Falls Skyforce of the NBA Development League and eventually found himself in the Iraqi Basketball League, where he made his best money yet, all to support his daughter, J’Oni, now 6 and in a pony phase. Even as college athletes get paid, more hoops prospects skip college altogether The accident in May was on a Wednesday, which meant Davis had custody of J’Oni. He was bringing J’Oni to her mother around 9:45 p.m. when Davis saw a homeless man with a sign asking for food. He pulled over near an exit ramp, popped the trunk of his Chrysler and sorted through groceries, looking for fruit cups and a bag of chips to donate. According to a crash report released by the Ohio Department of Public Safety, the driver of the Chevy Equinox “appeared to show signs of impairment from alcohol and or drugs” when she smashed into Davis, who got pinned to the back of his car. Both legs broken and severely bleeding, Davis crawled to his driver’s seat and told J’Oni to call her mother. The rest, as Davis remembers it, is fuzzy. He was in a medically induced coma for a week, and after regaining consciousness, after emerging from a shocked state, after realizing what transpired, he thought: “Why did it happen to me? I was doing a good deed for this person.” Before his accident, A.J. Davis played for the Columbus Condors, a semi pro team. (Courtesy of the Founding Fathers) Two months later, Davis was optimistic and positive during a telephone interview. Rehab can be grueling, but he enjoys staying active with push-ups and crunches from his chair. Showering provides a daily challenge, but by now he has it “down to a science.” Relying on others is frustrating, but he’s grateful to have a family support system nearby. Moore, who plays professionally in Germany but is home in Columbus for the summer, is a major part of that group. Being there for Davis is a reminder of his own pain — and how Davis was there for him. Devon Moore, left, and A.J. Davis helped JMU reach the NCAA tournament in 2013. (Scott K. Brown/Courtesy of JMU Athletics) Before the memorable 2012-2013 season, Moore’s mother was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a form of cancer. As his mother’s symptoms worsened throughout the year (she died in 2014), Moore, JMU’s point guard and leader, considered dropping out of school. On days when he couldn’t stop crying, teammates and coaches would visit his apartment to console him; when they left, it was Davis, his roommate, who made sure Moore ate and went to class. Davis even slept in Moore’s bedroom at night to provide comfort. Story continues below advertisement Moore and Davis grieved and thrived, pushing each other — and JMU — to their ultimate potential. Eight years later, their Founding Fathers alumni team will be in a familiar position: a No. 16 seed in the 64-team TBT tournament, which begins for them in Charleston, W.Va. They will face Sideline Cancer, a perennial contender in the eighth-year event. In selecting teams to compete, TBT officials try to measure their passion, talent, popularity and organization, according to CEO Jon Mugar, who said the Founding Fathers’ “persistence played a huge role in our decision to accept them this year” after they had been bypassed multiple times. For the past few years, Davis saw playing in TBT as a chance to raise his profile — “interviewing for a job,” as he put it. He never got that chance. A month after his accident, he learned his teammates would, and he has remained invested. Moore knows Sunday his friend will be barking orders to box out, even if Davis was sometimes lax in that regard. Story continues below advertisement Joe Kuykendall, a team manager in 2013 for JMU and general manager now for the Founding Fathers, called it “a big blow” that Davis can’t play, both because he was one of their top talents and because he has been so central to the Founding Fathers’ mission. Recruiting a roster, staying in contact with players scattered across the globe, urging them to fill out paperwork and promoting the team on social media is time-consuming, Kuykendall said, but he has done it the past few years with people such as Davis in mind. “We wanted this to be a platform to show that perhaps they can get a contract out of this,” Kuykendall said. “ … He wanted to get to Europe, and this would have been a great chance for him.” Circumstance changed Davis’s immediate ambitions. He has considered joining a wheelchair league — an opportunity to again dribble and shoot, score and compete. And on Wednesday, his surgeon fitted him for prosthetics for when his wounds heal. “Never know what I can do once I get my prosthetic legs,” Davis said. Story continues below advertisement Over the past two months, Moore has reminded his cousin he is more than just a ballplayer. It’s Moore’s way of showing appreciation for who Davis is, not what he does. Still, Davis talks about his career in the present tense, not the past. He’s motivated as an underdog, a forever 16 seed.
Mental toughness got hosed but not taking a timeout with a 1 point lead and the ball to get to the Elam ending is unbelievable
A Travis Ford developed group of players coached by Doug gottlieb is getting its ass kicked. Who would have thought? Thank god we chose boynton.
Don’t know. It was the biggest comeback ever. Not sure about Elam ending. Needed 15 points to win, I think.
Lol and a team with Terrance Jones and former #2 overall pick Derrick Williams lose in the second round