John Paul Jones Arena will host a regional of The Basketball Tournament this summer, the tournament announced in a press release Thursday, and it will include an alumni team called Embrace The Pace, headlined by former men’s basketball stars Kyle Guy and Kihei Clark.
TBT, the 64-team, $1 million winner-take-all summer event, started in 2014. It is open to anyone but has become a playground — an intense one — for former college stars not in the NBA, with about half the field composed of alumni teams.
Virginia has never convened an alumni team. It has never hosted a regional. Both those things are changing with the 2025 Virginia Regional, slated for July 18-23.
Charlottesville will become one of eight hotspots in a tournament that, over the last few years, has rapidly gained traction, selling thousands of tickets per host site. The other seven teams competing in the region are yet to be named.
“TBT is an exciting summer tournament,” Athletic Director Carla Williams said in the release, “which provides an opportunity to welcome back our alumni and reconnect them with our fans at one of college basketball’s best arenas.”
The team that surfaces from the eight-team, six-day melee in JPJ will advance to the quarterfinals July 29. Semifinals and finals will follow on July 31 and Aug. 3.
The Virginia team, Embrace The Pace, named Guy and Clark in the release as its first two members. Four others are already committed, and the team will unveil them and future recruits throughout the spring.
Guy, a 2019 national champion who returned to the program as a player mentor this offseason, will serve as a general manager in addition to playing. The other general manager is Johnny Carpenter, a 15-year Virginia staff member, most recently as an assistant coach, who departed the program this summer. He now works in the Memphis Grizzlies’ basketball operations department. He will coach Embrace The Pace, assisted by two former players.
TBT, in its explosion over the last few years, has projected an inherent nostalgic hue. That is part of its allure. It places players back in their college stadiums, on teams composed of former teammates, wearing jerseys that represent their old schools, balling before large crowds.
It is, in some ways, a portal into the past. Embrace The Pace? Another example of all that.
“TBT has become such a great way for players to reconnect with each other and strengthen their bonds with the schools they played at,” Guy said.
Tony Bennett, on TBT’s podcast, said he is looking forward to being able to “relive that excitement.” The podcast host joked about Bennett migrating down to the court as games wear on. Bennett laughed and shook his head throughout the whole question. No.
“Shoot, I’d try to get in shape [to play],” Bennett said, laughing. “But I’m 55.”
Carpenter is the “mad scientist” behind it all, Guy said on TBT’s podcast. Four years ago, he reached out to Guy, saying they should make a team. The timing did not work. But for last year’s tournament, he organized a team of his own, called Fail Harder. Now, with more time on his hands and “a bit of an itch” to compete, the dream of an alumni team materialized.
It will come with all the fingerprints of a Bennett-era team. Embrace The Pace’s logo, with two horses springing forward in front of five pillars, pays homage to Bennett’s five pillars. The excitement is palpable.
“Hopefully they win the whole thing and it’s great,” Bennett said. “But just to see them together…”
Bennett’s teams, of course, are known for their distinct style, plodding and stubborn. Hence the team name. Whether Virginia will live up to it, however, is another question.
“Do they work on defense in this tournament?” Bennett asked, joking.
“We will,” Guy said, drawing a round of laughter.
Virginia basketball writ large is moving into a new era — the coach that built it gone, uncertainty swirling as the offseason approaches. This is a chance to rewind the clock.
“The fans were treated to a stretch of 15 years with guys that represented all that, to me, was right about college, amateur sports,” Bennett said. “[TBT] kind of is a look back to an unbelievable era, that I don’t know whether it will be touched again.”
Lifting a trophy in JPJ? It is a possibility. For the first time in the event’s history, host teams will have the opportunity to host the quarterfinals, semifinals and championship. If two regional hosts face off in one of those rounds, the team that sells 4,000 tickets first will host.
“I’m looking forward to seeing a packed John Paul Jones Arena,” Guy said.
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