The Basketball Tournament 2019: Day 4 Viewing Guide

Welcome back to The Basketball Tournament!

TBT starts off weekend #3 of its festivities today. Yes, it’s Thursday. Yes, last weekend’s games started on Friday. No, all four regions are not playing today.

Confused yet? Hopefully not.

For whatever reason, the Salt Lake City regional will play all of their first round games today, and the Wichita region will play half of theirs tonight in a doubleheader at the Koch Arena. We’ll get the other half — the Marquette half — tomorrow night, along with all four games in the Richmond and Syracuse regions.

That gives us six games to watch. All of the Salt Lake City games will be on ESPN3, while the Wichita doubleheader will be on ESPN.

For more on Self Made and AfterShocks in the Wichita region tonight, please check out our very own Ben Snider’s region preview. He’s got a lot of smart things to say about both squads. The Kansas alumni are taking on Sideline Cancer, which is an OG TBT team with appearances in all six tournaments. SC has scoring wonder Marcus Keene on the roster, so he might be able to pull off the upset against the former Jayhawks by himself if he catches fire. The Wichita State alumni are facing Iowa United, a collection of Iowa, Iowa State, and Drake alumni. They’ve got guys ranging from Nicholas Baer and Peter Jok as well as dating all the way back to Marcus Fizer as well as Reed Timmer, Drake’s all-time leading scorer. Thanks to a contract with the Dallas Wings, Megan Gustafson will not become the first professional women’s basketball player to participate in TBT as was originally planned.

The Salt Lake City region is led by #1 seed Eberlein Drive, who went all the way to the title game before falling to Overseas Elite last summer. #3 seed Team Fredette is the host team here after Jimmer Fredette averaged 31 points per game, a TBT record, before losing in the semifinals in 2018. It appears, based on the roster page right this second as I write this that Jimmer will not be playing this year. However, former BYU head coach Dave Rose is listed as TF’s head coach, giving them a big leg up in that department. There’s all sorts of familiar names on this roster — Rob Gray, Tyler Haws, Tu Holloway, and Josh Sharma — so don’t be surprised to see them make it to the regional title game or all the way to the quarterfinals in Chicago.

All times Central