Penn State Basketball on Verge of Taking The Basketball Tournament by Storm

A Penn State Basketball alumni team is on the verge of participating in The Basketball Tournament for the first time next month.

Next week, it’s expected that the Happy Valley Hoopers will be selected to participate in The Basketball Tournament (TBT), likely playing in the Syracuse region. TBT is dubbed as the ‘highest stakes basketball tournament in the world’, where the winning team (and the winning team only) wins one million dollars.

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The Penn State team will feature a lot of recognizable names, like Joshua Reaves who played briefly in the NBA, Jamari Wheeler, Mike Watkins, now Florida Gulf Coast coach Shep Garner, and 2023 graduate Myles Dread. The team, managed by John Harrar also includes Sam Sessoms, Taylor Nussbaum and Trent Buttrick. The Head Coach, Ross Condon, a former Penn State Basketball assistant coach for 10 years under Pat Chambers, sat down on the Shots Gotta Fall Podcast to discuss coaching his former players again. Condon expressed excitement about the opportunity to get these guys a chance to play in this type of tournament, since all but Dread never played in the NCAA Tournament despite a guaranteed bid in the 2020 pandemic-shortened season. You can listen to the episode and be sure to tune into the Selection Show on YouTube on Wednesday, June 21 to hopefully hear the Happy Valley Hoopers called!

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Evan Smith

Evan Smith is an alum of Penn State (Marketing, Economics, 2011) and a basketball season ticket holder since 2006.

NittanyCentral is his second reporting job following the Men's Basketball program. He co-founded and co-hosts the Shots Gotta Fall - The Penn State Basketball Podcast (the premiere, the best, the only) with Steve Travis.

Smith's most proud moment covering the team was seeing the national No. 9 ranking during Pat Chambers' last year. His most embarrassing moment was spending almost a thousand dollars to travel 2,000 miles in 46 hours to watch the Nittany Lions lose to Temple in the 2011 NCAA Tournament (screw you Juan Fernandez).