The Players Era Festival has become the top early-season tournament in college basketball. Feast Week is one of the best times of the season as it gives fans an early taste of what March Madness will be all about.
The Players Era takes place in Las Vegas with 18 very good teams. Notable teams include Houston, Michigan, St. John's, Auburn, Tennessee, Kansas, Gonzaga, Baylor, Alabama, Maryland, San Diego State, Creighton, and, of course, Iowa State.
Michigan and Gonzaga will now meet in the final because of their 2-0 record and point differential. Kansas and Tennessee are playing for 3rd place. Iowa State, which was the 5th team to finish 2-0, will be playing for “5th place” because they did not do a good enough job of separating from their two opponents. The Players Era will change in the future, but for now, there is no bracket.
The Cyclones took down St. John's in a huge win to open. Iowa State will take on Syracuse in under 30 minutes to try and move to 7-0 on the season and establish itself as a serious contender and potentially a top 10 team.
Head coach TJ Otzelberger didn't want to do the wrong thing. He sacrificed potentially making the title game or even the third-place game because he did not want to disrespect the game, despite the rules. They finished with a 9.5 win margin.
“Going into it, you know that point deferential is a part of this,” Otzelberger told CBS Sports. “The respect I have for Coach McDermott and his program, we're not going to put the game in position where we're trying to run up the score and get extra points late to win by a greater margin. To me, the relationship and the character of our program is more important than that. The easy solution would have been if we would have been up by [20], then it would have been fine, but that wasn't the case. We want to do the right thing.”
You can catch Syracuse and Iowa State at 1 pm ET on TNT.
