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Big Blue Nation gets one more summer night inside Historic Memorial Coliseum, and this one is for the alumni crown.
La Familia, the Kentucky Basketball alumni team, hosts JHX Hoops, the Kansas alumni squad, on Wednesday night in the TBT 2026 Alumni Championship. Win it, and the Wildcats move to the doorstep of a $2 million payday
Here’s everything you need for Wednesday’s alumni championship.
La Familia (Kentucky) vs. JHX Hoops (Kansas)
- Event: TBT 2026 Alumni Championship, single-elimination
- Date: Wednesday, July 29, 7:00 PM ET
- Location: Historic Memorial Coliseum, Lexington, Ky.
- TV Channel: FS1
- Live Online Stream: FOX Sports app and FOXSports.com with a TV provider login, or through Fubo, YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, DirecTV Stream and Sling Blue
- Tickets: Available through Ticketmaster via tbthoops.com
Note the channel change from Sunday. La Familia’s semifinal was on the big FOX broadcast network, but the alumni championship slides over to FS1, so make sure you know where to find it before tip.
How both teams got here
La Familia has done it the hard way all tournament. The Cats needed all three games to get past The Ville in the opening round, then survived Boeheim’s Army 70-66 on Sunday at Memorial Coliseum. Archie Goodwin went for a game-high 30, Willie Cauley-Stein locked down the paint, and Kahlil Whitney slammed home a putback of a Goodwin miss to cap the Elam Ending. La Familia trailed by three heading into the untimed finish and closed on an 8-2 run to steal it.
JHX Hoops arrives red-hot and battle-tested. The Jayhawk alumni rallied from an early hole to knock off Kansas State’s Purple Reign 2-1 in the opening round, then walked into Wichita and dethroned the defending champion AfterShocks 64-59 on Monday night.
The game turned chippy, with a mid-game skirmish that emptied both benches, but the story ended the way it keeps ending for Kansas: with Frank Mason III burying the game-winning 3 in the Elam Ending, this one launched from the Wichita State logo. It was Mason’s third straight Elam Ending game-winner. Zeke Mayo led JHX with 25.
Familiar faces and a loaded Kansas roster
La Familia’s roster is stacked with Wildcats you know: Cauley-Stein, Andrew Harrison, Goodwin, Whitney, Marcus Lee and DeAndre Liggins, alongside Darryl Morsell, Sean McNeil, Chris Coffey and James Mainor-Bell. Jon Hood, a member of Kentucky’s 2012 national championship team, is running the bench, with Twany Beckham in the front office.
JHX Hoops counters with a Jayhawk alumni group headlined by Mason, Mayo, Jacob Hanna, Mario Chalmers and Carlton Bragg Jr. This is a veteran, guard-heavy team that has proven it can win close and win ugly, which is exactly what the Elam Ending rewards.
If a Kentucky and Kansas showdown gets your attention, it should. These two blue bloods met for the 2012 national championship, when a freshman-loaded Kentucky team beat the Jayhawks 67-59 in New Orleans for the program’s eighth title. Fittingly, Hood was on that roster.
Fourteen years later, he gets Kansas again, this time from the sideline.
The stakes
TBT reworked its format this year: 14 teams, a bracket split into alumni and non-alumni sides, and $2 million winner-take-all. Wednesday’s winner is crowned alumni champion and advances to the tournament final against the last non-alumni team standing, one win from the money.
In other words, La Familia is two wins away from $2 million, and it can bank the first one at home. And as always, it ends with the Elam Ending. The clock shuts off in the fourth quarter, a target score goes up, and somebody has to make a shot to win it.
Both of these teams have already proven they can close in that format. Wednesday, only one of them will.
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