The Basketball Tournament: UD Arena could host games again in 2022

The players saw the Syracuse alumni team, Boeheim’s Army, win a back-and-forth game against Team 23 on an Elam Ending 3-pointer by Keifer Sykes.

After the 69-67 victory, two confetti cannons made a mess of Tom Blackburn Court. Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim, who watched the game from press row with his wife Juli, handed out hugs during the celebration, as did former Dayton assistant coach Allen Griffin, one of Boeheim’s assistants, who had a front-row seat behind Boeheim.

All in all, it was a good night at a nearly 52-year-old arena that had never hosted this much basketball in the middle of the summer.

“This is what we do,” UD Arena Director Scott DeBolt said after the game. “We do basketball. We do it well. The TBT was great to work with. We’d love to have them back. They’ve got a lot of options with what they want to do, and we’re willing to work with them and see if we can make this a tradition.”

Whether UD Arena will get TBT games next year or in future years — as a regional site or in the championship rounds again — is now the question.

“It’s really about where fans want us to go,” said TBT founder Jon Mugar after the final game, “and Dayton fans have always been very enthusiastic about their team. We would have to consider this for a regional site, where you could guarantee that the Red Scare will be there.”

The Dayton alumni team lost in the second round at the Covelli Center in Columbus. That hurt attendance, though Syracuse fans made a good showing in three games at UD Arena and especially in the championship game, which showed off the drama the Elam Ending can bring to games.

“We’ve been kind of bracing for an ending like that during a championship game for the past three or four years,” Mugar said, “where there are multiple missed game-winning shots and then an amazing shot like that to finish, so it was nice to see it play out.”

Boeheim’s Army led 61-60 at the first stoppage under the four-minute mark. At that point, the Elam Ending began with eight points added to 61, making the target score 69. The first team to reach that mark would win the game.

The former Green Bay star Sykes, one of four non-Syracuse alums on Boeheim’s Army’s roster, scored 21 points on 7-of-11 shooting. His game-ending basket came after Team 23 missed two shots that would have won the game on previous possessions.

“I’m just thinking, ‘Man, we’ve got to get a 3 because if they score two points, it’s over,” Sykes said. “At first, we were like, ‘We don’t need a 3.’ It was 66-65. But I was already still going for the 3. But the last play, we just ran a play called Deuce Choice. They knew it was coming, so he was waiting on the screen. I saw him looking over his shoulder. He got distracted. I wanted it, so I took the shot. I got my feet under me, a good left-right gather, going to my right hand. It’s a shot I’ve practiced all my life.”

The 10 Boeheim’s Army players each received $80,000 for the victory. That money was wired to their accounts by the Zelle app immediately after the game. Two coaches and two general managers split the remaining $200,000 of the $1 million prize.

The games at UD Arena started Saturday with four quarterfinal games and continued Sunday with two semifinals, plus a 33-Point Contest featuring former Dayton guard Jordan Sibert.

UD Arena became the seventh facility to host the championship game in the TBT’s eight-year history, following: Case Gym at Boston University (2014); Rose Hill Gym at Fordham University in Bronx, N.Y. (2015-16); the Physical Education Complex in Baltimore, Md. (2017); Tallmade L. Hill Field House in Baltimore (2018); Wintrust Arena in Chicago (2019); and Nationwide Arena in Columbus (2020).

“I think this is one of, if not the, nicest arenas we’ve shot in before,” Mugar said. “It just looks amazing on TV. Even when Jordan advanced in the 33-Point Contest beyond round one, there was a thunderous roar in the crowd, and that came from 1,000 people. I’m like, ‘What’s it going to be like with 10,000 in here someday?’ And it made me kind of year for even more.”

Credit: David Jablonski

Credit: David Jablonski