Before the Final Four, College Seniors Hooped for $100K

Catch the quarterfinals on Twitter Sunday from 2-3 p.m. EST:  SWAC vs. America East, SEC vs. Big Ten, MEAC vs. West Coast, Big West vs. Ivy. The semifinals, third-place game, and championship will air on ESPN2 from 3:30-5:30 p.m. Sunday.

SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Moments after Jamal Aytes stepped to the line and calmly sank two free throws, leading his Big Sky team to a 21-20 win over the SWAC, a duffel bag of cash, thrust from the sidelines, landed on the court. He’s finally cashing out.

Take a $16 Uber ride from the Alamodome and you’ll find college basketball players from all over the country celebrating their own duffel-bag moments. Well, technically, the guys balling out in this 3-on-3 tournament aren’t college athletes anymore—they’re seniors whose NCAA eligibility expired after their last collegiate game.

Here at the first annual Dos Equis 3X3U (pronounced “three-on-three-you”) National Championship at St. Mary’s University, all 32 D-1 conferences have a team in attendance. With constant music—like “Why You Always Hatin?” and “Walk It Talk It”—pumping through the venue and the athletes genuinely playing hard, the environment is electric.

“The competition is high because everybody wants to win money,” says Ates, who averaged 12.7 PPG and 5.3 RPG this season for Southern Utah. “We’re all seniors who are about to go off into the world, so we all just want that cash. It’s great.”

In this setting, it doesn’t matter whether you’re from North Carolina or North Carolina A&T.  All that matters is whether you can get buckets.

In the first game of the tournament, the SWAC beat the Big 12. Later that day, the MEAC took down the ACC and Atlantic Sun conquered the Big East. This tournament presents an opportunity for smaller-conference players to show they can hang with the big dogs.

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