Kentucky Wildcats Basketball: Cats to participate in huge Nike Tournament in 2017

Apr 2, 2012; New Orleans, LA, USA; Kentucky Wildcats celebrate after defeating the Kansas Jayhawks 67-59 in the finals of the 2012 NCAA men

ESPN is reporting that Kentucky will take place in a 2017 Nike Tournament set up to honor Nike head Phil Knight’s 80th birthday. As far as basketball tournaments go, this one has the potential to be the biggest basketball tournament outside of the NCAA Tournament. Actually it is two eight team tournaments that will take place in November 2017 in Portland over four days.

Why two tournaments?

NCAA rules only allow one team per conference for this type of tournament and there is always the possibility that teams may switch conferences as well by then, so all bases are covered. Even though there will not be a true championship game (at least it does not look like it) , this game has the star power of a Sweet 16 and has been billed as “the greatest in-season basketball event of all-time”.

I agree.

In addition to Kentucky, the following schools have committed: Michigan State, Duke, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio State, Connecticut, Georgetown, Texas, Oklahoma, Stanford, Oregon, Xavier, Butler, Gonzaga and Portland.

Are you drooling for this yet? Credit for this goes to Michigan State AD Mark Hollis who wanted to come up with a way to honor Knight and all the other schools AD’s readily agreed. As far as college hoops goes, this is incredible and will feature eight games in one day for the opening Thursday.