COLUMBUS, Ohio – Carmen’s Crew takes the court in its opening round game of The Basketball Tournament (TBT) on Friday evening and it will be a chance for redemption after a sudden and disappointing loss in the 2020 event.
Much of the roster remains the same from the year before and the year before that and there is a familiarity built with this team, a team that has been part of the field since the 2017 event and won the whole tournament two years later in 2019.
There are not many events where you get to pick and choose who you are going to play with and that is something that sets the TBT apart from other teams. In high school, college and the pros, there are other people picking the teams but in this event, while general manager Jared Sullinger is the keeper of the roster, all of these players know each other well and would be playing together if not for this event.
“Obviously it's fun to get out and compete,” Carmen’s Crew guard Jon Diebler said. “For all of us to play on the same team in a competitive official setting is nice because obviously we play against each other every summer.”
It is a chance to join together as a group when the “job” has most of these players earning a living overseas playing basketball. Summer allows for a chance to practice with some familiar faces and now have a chance to earn a one-million-dollar winner-take-all prize.
“We're here in the offseason working out, playing against each other, but to kind of play in an official game setting and compete against other guys that either we played against in college or play against overseas, it's just an awesome event,” Diebler added.
For those who are unfamiliar with the event, it is a 64-team tournament, single-elimination with the top team splitting the seven-digit cash prize at the conclusion of the tournament. The Wichita and West Virginia regions are already underway while the Columbus and Illinois regions will start at the end of this week.
We have already seen upsets in the West Virginia region with the East Tennessee alumni team, a 12-seed, pulling off upsets to advance to the third round.
“You guys know watching, it's fun to watch,” Diebler said. “I know we're watching the games in the regions that are going on right now.”
Carmen’s Crew was dumped in the first round last year, the year that the team was supposed to defend its tournament championship. Anything can happen in this event and usually does.
“It's better when you win,” Diebler said. “We've kind of been on every end of the spectrum there with making it to the final our first year and then losing in the first round last year to winning it two years ago. That's the beauty of it, it's kind of like the NCAA tournament, you just never know, you have one bad game. And that can be it.”
And that happened when the No. 1 overall seed lost to the No. 16 seed, a team made up of Illinois alumni, by 10 points. A first-round bye in that tournament didn’t even allow for Carmen’s Crew to play more than that one game.
So this team knows what happens when things go horribly wrong but also knows what happens when a team catches fire.
“You can get hot for six games and you could win, so it's fun,” Diebler said.
Last year’s event was played entirely in Columbus and teams were put into a bubble due to the shutdowns associated with COVID-19. Fans were not permitted to be in attendance, something that will be different this year. Something that will be noted as Carmen’s Crew hosts a region at the Covelli Center on the campus of The Ohio State University.
“We're really excited to play in the Covelli Center and have fans though, it'll be good to kind of have that sense of normalcy,” Diebler said. “Overseas, in a lot of countries, they started having fans towards the end of the season. So, it would be good to do that now.”
Carmen’s Crew starts its run towards redemption on Friday at 9pm against Mid-American Unity, a team made up largely from MAC basketball alumni. The game can be seen nationally on ESPN.
