Thursday, April 2
Las Vegas, Nev.
8 p.m.
West Virginia University
vs
Stanford
Photo by: WVU Athletic Communications
Mountaineers to Conclude 2025-26 Campaign This Weekend in Las Vegas
April 01, 2026 01:30 PM | Men's Basketball
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The 2025-26 West Virginia University men's basketball season will conclude this weekend in the eight-team College Basketball Crown in Las Vegas.
West Virginia (18-14) will face Stanford in one quarterfinal game at 8 p.m. EDT on Thursday night, followed by Rutgers against Creighton.
Tonight's games will feature Oklahoma against Colorado in the first contest and Baylor against Minnesota in the nightcap.
All the quarterfinals will be played at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.
The individual players are vying for a $500,000 prize pool broken down to the winning team sharing $300,000 and the runner-up receiving $150,000 to get there.
The format is single elimination with the semifinal-round games taking place on Saturday followed by the championship game on Sunday, all in MGM Grand Garden Arena.
All seven games will be televised nationally on the FOX Network.
West Virginia's matchup against 20-12 Stanford pits two teams that last played each other on Dec. 28, 1959, in the Los Angeles Classic when the second-rated Mountaineers, led by All-American Jerry West, downed the Cardinal 66-47.
So, from that perspective, Thursday night's game will be interesting to observe.
West Virginia coach Ross Hodge mentioned that it will be one final opportunity for his team to be together to play college basketball games.
"Any time you get a chance to put on a college uniform, represent a University and in our case a state, you've got to take advantage of those opportunities," Hodge explained. "With the Big 12's partnership with FOX, if anyone is wondering why the Crown and not the NIT, (the Crown) is what is contractually obligated with the Big 12. The two top teams that don't play in the NCAA Tournament go to the Crown. Aside from that, for our group in particular, they really do enjoy each other and they enjoy playing basketball, so it makes it an enjoyable experience to keep playing."
The flip side to extending the season for another weekend is that it doesn't allow Hodge and his staff the opportunity to devote their full attention to building next year's roster.
Hodge said it's really inconsequential now because the new transfer portal calendar doesn't open until next Tuesday after Monday night's national championship game.
"They've made some adjustments (to the recruiting calendar) because the coaches complained about that a little bit, the timing of the portal, and now that's why the portal officially opens the Tuesday," he said. "As anyone who has a pulse is aware, the portal is always kind of open. Let's be honest.
"The biggest difference is if you were still playing a year ago, you could be sacrificing time where you could be having people on official visits or you could be physically in person with people that are already in the portal," he added. "Now, other than kind of collecting names and seeing who is in it, you are not losing the opportunity to have somebody come visit because you are still playing."
Hodge said the Crown's unique NIL financial component really doesn't factor into his messaging to his players.
"When they put this idea together and they said, 'Hey, you can win this amount of money' it probably felt very significant. It's kind of sad to say, and maybe disgusting … I hate that I'm even about to say this, but from two years it went from probably, 'Hey, this is a good amount of money' to inconsequential," he said. "It's sad to say. You are talking to somebody whose first job as a junior college assistant I made $8,000 for the year, had a meal card and lived in a dorm. There are people out there who work 12 hours a day and be like, 'How could that be?' We haven't discussed it as a group, and I don't plan on it being a part of my messaging to these guys. These guys love each other, and they want to spend one more weekend with each other."
The 20-12 Stanford team West Virginia will be facing on Thursday night finished tied with Cal for ninth place in this year's ACC standings with a 9-9 league record. The Cardinal fell 64-63 to Pitt in the ACC Tournament after winning four straight to conclude the regular season.
Stanford has one of college basketball's top freshman players in 6-foot-2 guard Ebuka Okorie, a potential first-rounder in this year's NBA Draft if he chooses to come out. If he remains at Stanford for another season, he could potentially be a lottery pick next season.
The Nashua, New Hampshire, resident is averaging a team-best 22.8 points per game. He gets scoring support from backcourt mate Benny Gealer, a 6-foot-1 senior who is averaging 11.1 points per contest.
Hodge said he is impressed with what he's seen from Okorie while studying Stanford's games this season.
"He's one of those freshmen who has not had the same level of hype as some of the freshmen in our league, but he's certainly had that same level of production for them. He's a tough cover," he stated.
West Virginia flew out to Las Vegas on Tuesday and will have a workout scheduled today in advance of Thursday night's game.
The Athletics Communications Office released the official 12-player travel roster for the tournament, which will be minus freshman guard Amir Jenkins, who is scheduled to undergo offseason shoulder surgery today.
Hodge indicated Jenkins' long-term prognosis won't be known until surgeries are completed on both shoulders.
The coach also indicated conversations have already begun with current players on the roster with collegiate eligibility remaining, acknowledging his desire to have them back for 2026-27.
This year's team was constructed with the goal of reaching the NCAA Tournament. Hodge said it came out about "five or six possessions" shy of reaching that objective.
Next year's roster will include a November signing period class rated 20th-best in the country by ESPN.com, headlined by five-star point guard Miles Sadler from Bella Vista Prep in Scottsdale, Arizona.
WVU's two other November signees are four-star prospects Kingston Whitty, a 6-foot-2 guard from Mableton, Georgia, and Aliou Dioum, a 6-foot-10 forward from Dakar, Senegal and a teammate of Sadler at Bella Vista.
Hodge mentioned signing another prep player is a possibility this spring to go along with several transfer portal players to replace the seven seniors on this year's roster, led by Honor Huff and his 15.8 points-per-game average.
"This year has gone fast, and I really haven't had a true amount of time to really reflect on anything," Hodge said of celebrating his one-year coaching anniversary at WVU last week. "Weirdly enough, the slowest time now for a college basketball coach is when you get your new team that shows up in June. As soon as your season is over now, you are right into the transfer portal, and those visits will start happening. You are kind of reconstructing your roster all over again, so you really don't have a lot of time to reflect on the good and the bad and where we are.
"You used to be able to play the season, everybody goes to their neutral corners for a little bit, you get away from your players, they get away from you, and then you realize, 'Yeah man, we actually do like each other.' Then you start your offseason workouts. Now, because of the nature of this thing, you have no time in that regard," he concluded.
Thursday night's game against Stanford will tip off at 8 p.m. and will be televised nationally on FS1 (Tim Brando, Jim Jackson and Allison Williams).
Mountaineer Sports Network radio coverage with Tony Caridi and Brad Howe will get things started at 7 p.m. on stations throughout West Virginia, online via WVUsports.com and the Varsity Network and WVU Gameday apps.
The winner will meet the Rutgers-Creighton winner on Saturday afternoon at 4 p.m. EDT.
West Virginia (18-14) will face Stanford in one quarterfinal game at 8 p.m. EDT on Thursday night, followed by Rutgers against Creighton.
Tonight's games will feature Oklahoma against Colorado in the first contest and Baylor against Minnesota in the nightcap.
All the quarterfinals will be played at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.
The individual players are vying for a $500,000 prize pool broken down to the winning team sharing $300,000 and the runner-up receiving $150,000 to get there.
The format is single elimination with the semifinal-round games taking place on Saturday followed by the championship game on Sunday, all in MGM Grand Garden Arena.
All seven games will be televised nationally on the FOX Network.
West Virginia's matchup against 20-12 Stanford pits two teams that last played each other on Dec. 28, 1959, in the Los Angeles Classic when the second-rated Mountaineers, led by All-American Jerry West, downed the Cardinal 66-47.
So, from that perspective, Thursday night's game will be interesting to observe.
West Virginia coach Ross Hodge mentioned that it will be one final opportunity for his team to be together to play college basketball games.
"Any time you get a chance to put on a college uniform, represent a University and in our case a state, you've got to take advantage of those opportunities," Hodge explained. "With the Big 12's partnership with FOX, if anyone is wondering why the Crown and not the NIT, (the Crown) is what is contractually obligated with the Big 12. The two top teams that don't play in the NCAA Tournament go to the Crown. Aside from that, for our group in particular, they really do enjoy each other and they enjoy playing basketball, so it makes it an enjoyable experience to keep playing."
The flip side to extending the season for another weekend is that it doesn't allow Hodge and his staff the opportunity to devote their full attention to building next year's roster.
Hodge said it's really inconsequential now because the new transfer portal calendar doesn't open until next Tuesday after Monday night's national championship game.
"They've made some adjustments (to the recruiting calendar) because the coaches complained about that a little bit, the timing of the portal, and now that's why the portal officially opens the Tuesday," he said. "As anyone who has a pulse is aware, the portal is always kind of open. Let's be honest.
"The biggest difference is if you were still playing a year ago, you could be sacrificing time where you could be having people on official visits or you could be physically in person with people that are already in the portal," he added. "Now, other than kind of collecting names and seeing who is in it, you are not losing the opportunity to have somebody come visit because you are still playing."
Hodge said the Crown's unique NIL financial component really doesn't factor into his messaging to his players.
"When they put this idea together and they said, 'Hey, you can win this amount of money' it probably felt very significant. It's kind of sad to say, and maybe disgusting … I hate that I'm even about to say this, but from two years it went from probably, 'Hey, this is a good amount of money' to inconsequential," he said. "It's sad to say. You are talking to somebody whose first job as a junior college assistant I made $8,000 for the year, had a meal card and lived in a dorm. There are people out there who work 12 hours a day and be like, 'How could that be?' We haven't discussed it as a group, and I don't plan on it being a part of my messaging to these guys. These guys love each other, and they want to spend one more weekend with each other."
The 20-12 Stanford team West Virginia will be facing on Thursday night finished tied with Cal for ninth place in this year's ACC standings with a 9-9 league record. The Cardinal fell 64-63 to Pitt in the ACC Tournament after winning four straight to conclude the regular season.
Stanford has one of college basketball's top freshman players in 6-foot-2 guard Ebuka Okorie, a potential first-rounder in this year's NBA Draft if he chooses to come out. If he remains at Stanford for another season, he could potentially be a lottery pick next season.
The Nashua, New Hampshire, resident is averaging a team-best 22.8 points per game. He gets scoring support from backcourt mate Benny Gealer, a 6-foot-1 senior who is averaging 11.1 points per contest.
Hodge said he is impressed with what he's seen from Okorie while studying Stanford's games this season.
"He's one of those freshmen who has not had the same level of hype as some of the freshmen in our league, but he's certainly had that same level of production for them. He's a tough cover," he stated.
West Virginia flew out to Las Vegas on Tuesday and will have a workout scheduled today in advance of Thursday night's game.
The Athletics Communications Office released the official 12-player travel roster for the tournament, which will be minus freshman guard Amir Jenkins, who is scheduled to undergo offseason shoulder surgery today.
Hodge indicated Jenkins' long-term prognosis won't be known until surgeries are completed on both shoulders.
The coach also indicated conversations have already begun with current players on the roster with collegiate eligibility remaining, acknowledging his desire to have them back for 2026-27.
This year's team was constructed with the goal of reaching the NCAA Tournament. Hodge said it came out about "five or six possessions" shy of reaching that objective.
Next year's roster will include a November signing period class rated 20th-best in the country by ESPN.com, headlined by five-star point guard Miles Sadler from Bella Vista Prep in Scottsdale, Arizona.
WVU's two other November signees are four-star prospects Kingston Whitty, a 6-foot-2 guard from Mableton, Georgia, and Aliou Dioum, a 6-foot-10 forward from Dakar, Senegal and a teammate of Sadler at Bella Vista.
Hodge mentioned signing another prep player is a possibility this spring to go along with several transfer portal players to replace the seven seniors on this year's roster, led by Honor Huff and his 15.8 points-per-game average.
"This year has gone fast, and I really haven't had a true amount of time to really reflect on anything," Hodge said of celebrating his one-year coaching anniversary at WVU last week. "Weirdly enough, the slowest time now for a college basketball coach is when you get your new team that shows up in June. As soon as your season is over now, you are right into the transfer portal, and those visits will start happening. You are kind of reconstructing your roster all over again, so you really don't have a lot of time to reflect on the good and the bad and where we are.
"You used to be able to play the season, everybody goes to their neutral corners for a little bit, you get away from your players, they get away from you, and then you realize, 'Yeah man, we actually do like each other.' Then you start your offseason workouts. Now, because of the nature of this thing, you have no time in that regard," he concluded.
Thursday night's game against Stanford will tip off at 8 p.m. and will be televised nationally on FS1 (Tim Brando, Jim Jackson and Allison Williams).
Mountaineer Sports Network radio coverage with Tony Caridi and Brad Howe will get things started at 7 p.m. on stations throughout West Virginia, online via WVUsports.com and the Varsity Network and WVU Gameday apps.
The winner will meet the Rutgers-Creighton winner on Saturday afternoon at 4 p.m. EDT.
Players Mentioned
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