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After their run fell short in their inaugural year, the Stars of Storrs will look to make a run at the championship in The Basketball Tournament (TBT).
Eight teams are in the Syracuse Regional, hosted by top-seeded Boeheim’s Army— a team comprised of Syracuse alumni. The Stars of Storrs are the No. 2 seed facing against No. 7 seed Brown Ballers on Saturday night. The remaining five teams are the No. 3 Green Mountain Men (Vermont alumni), No. 4 We Are D3, No. 5 Layne’s Hope, No. 6 Rise and Grind and No. 8 Herkimer Originals.
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Players returning from last year’s squad include team captain Ryan Boatright, DeAndre Daniels, RJ Cole and Rodney Purvis. Cole is expected to return to the roster eventually, but is on his honeymoon after recently getting married.
That means a bunch of new faces will join the roster this time around. Only one more former Husky joins the squad with Terry Larrier. Larrier will not play the first game due to personal reasons that came up during a travel day. Daniel Hamilton was expected to join, but ended up taking a contract overseas with Al-Nasr SC Benghazi. The rest of the team includes former Seton Hall Pirate Isaiah Whitehead, Central Connecticut State guard Jordan Jones, former Clemson Tiger Eli Thomas, former USJ Bluejay Tyree Mitchell, former Murray State Racer Brandon Garrett and former Tennessee State and UAB forward Kassim Nicholson.
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Two-time NCAA champion Tyler Olander will step up as head coach this season after serving as an assistant coach last summer under former head coach Chris Smith. Along with Olander are a handful of coaches from the University of Saint Joseph (USJ) in West Hartford, Conn.: Jeff Calhoun, Steve Laffin and Jake Sullivan. Nearly the entire head coaching staff played under former UConn head coach Jim Calhoun, whether it was at UConn or USJ. The only outlier is Michael Boatright Mcallister, who graduated from Benedictine University in 2020.
TikTok influencer and UConn alum Marc D’Amelio is back as the general manager and organizer of the team.
CBB Review highlights Cole as the potential team’s most valuable player. He averaged 16 points in the two games the team played and is remembered as an underrated point guard during the Dan Hurley era at Connecticut. The Stars of Storrs are guard-heavy, but Cole could break out as a leader along with Boatright.
The article also listed Whitehead as the team’s “make-or-break player.” He is remembered as a legend in South Orange and Newark, N.J., after helping Seton Hall win the 2016 Big East Tournament. After his decorated career at Seton Hall, he spent some time in the NBA before finding more success overseas. He will serve as a slashing guard for this team.
The Brown Ballers will be their first obstacle. Two years ago, this team made headlines after upsetting the Red Scare, the top-seeded hosting team that consisted mainly of former Dayton Flyers. Their roster does not consist of high-major college basketball alumni but include a handful of players who played college basketball in Canada.
The two will meet in hopes of advancing to face the winner between the Green Mountain Men and Rise and Grind. Tip-off is set for 8 p.m. ET from SRC Arena in Syracuse, N.Y. It will be available to watch live on FS2.
Calhoun's Corner 