COLLEGE PARK — Maryland men’s basketball’s inclusion in this week’s Players Era Festival is a business trip in every sense of the label.
In another sign of the ever-changing landscape of college athletics, the Players Era Festival at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas is one of the first of its kind to pay teams’ name, image and likeness funds for their participation in the four-day event.
And the Terps (4-1) are one of 18 schools that will compete in the invitational. They are scheduled to face UNLV (3-2) on Tuesday at midnight and No. 13 Gonzaga (5-0) on Tuesday at 9:30 p.m.
Maryland’s involvement with the tournament was a direct result of the university’s decision to replace coach Kevin Willard with Buzz Williams. When Williams helmed Texas A&M a year ago, the Aggies went 2-1 at the inaugural Players Era Festival with wins against Creighton and Rutgers and a loss to Oregon — the invitational’s eventual champion — and finished in fifth place among eight teams.
“I know some of the people that are involved in how the tournament started,” Williams said Friday afternoon inside Xfinity Center. “That was a portion of the way that we were able to participate in the first one last year, and then when I was hired here, that was the beginning of the conversation for us to play in it this year.”
The field for the Players Era Festival has exploded, and Williams said 32 schools are contracted to play next year, including the Terps. The primary motivation? The invitational’s NIL payouts.
The tournament distributed $9 million in NIL resources last year, according to On3, and that pool has increased to $24 million this time. Each school is slated to receive at least $1 million, according to ESPN, and teams that advance in the tournament will earn more.
Williams was uncertain whether the Players Era Festival would be the model for other multiple-team tournaments.
“I think it’s like so many other things,” he said. “The model of what this is, is completely changed. And so it’s hard to know if that’s going to be the wave of the future. I think that just kind of depends upon tournament organizers and some of the decision makers and all of the other ones, but for sure, this has become — at a very fast rate — one that you want to play in partly for the finances, but partly for the Quad 1A opportunities involved in it.”
The influx to university coffers has attracted some of the top teams in the country. In addition to Gonzaga, also scheduled to participate are No. 2 Houston (5-0), No. 7 Michigan (4-0), No. 11 Alabama (3-1), No. 14 St. John’s (3-1), No. 16 Iowa State (4-0), No. 20 Tennessee (5-0), No. 22 Auburn (4-1), and No. 24 Kansas (3-2).
At any rate, Maryland began preparations for the trip shortly after Wednesday night’s 95-90 overtime victory over Mount St. Mary’s. The team was scheduled to fly out to Las Vegas on Saturday to get acclimated to the two-time zone difference and settle into its usual routine of practice that Williams has broken down to what he calls “two-day-before” and “one-day-before” preparation.
“This will be our first tournament obviously,” he said. “Rarely do you play two games in less than 24 hours. TV time suggests that that’s what we’ll play. So as a staff, we won’t sleep Monday night, but when we wake up Tuesday morning, we will have two-day-before, and Tuesday afternoon, we will have one-day-before. And then obviously Tuesday night, we’ll play. So, depending on how Monday and Tuesday go, all of the specifics of the tournament will depend upon if we play Wednesday or Thursday.”
The Terps will play a third game in Las Vegas, but details are unknown at this time. Teams will play Wednesday or Thursday with matchups based on record, point differential, points scored and points allowed.
A third-place game is scheduled for Wednesday at 6 p.m., and a title game is slated for 8:30 p.m. later that night. The other games will be announced after the conclusion of Maryland’s matchup against Gonzaga.
Williams acknowledged that playing two games in a span of less than 24 hours will test the physical stamina and mental resolve of the players and coaches alike.
“How are you going to handle playing two games in less than 24 hours? We have some thoughts on it, but we can’t fast forward to Monday or Tuesday,” he said. “We need to try to be where our feet are today. And so that’s our messaging, and as much as we want it to be our words, we want our actions and our words to match up. And it’s a credit to the character of the guys that we have. I do think that there’s been some growth in that regard.”
With senior power forward Pharrel Payne (lower body), redshirt junior point guard Myles Rice (ankle), redshirt freshman small forward George Turkson Jr. (eye) and senior small forward Solomon Washington (ankle) battling injuries, depth remains an issue for the Terps. Williams noted that Friday was the team’s 41st practice of the season, but only 11th with 5-on-5 exercises.
Still, the obvious goal is to get into a position to play Wednesday for the title or third place, Williams said.
“I’ve never played three games in three days, coached three games in three days in my career,” he said. “Most of these tournaments, you play to have a day off [and] play another one. This will be the first time I think in my career that we’ve done three in a row. I hope we do three in a row.”
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