KU’s JHX Hoops alumni team ousted from TBT in Round of 16: ‘It (stinks) to lose’
A meeting between Kansas and Wichita State in the TBT will have to wait at least another year.
The KU alumni basketball team, known as JHX Hoops, squandered an eight-point lead in the fourth quarter — 59-51 — and fell to 2023 TBT champ Heartfire, 71-68, in a Round of 16 contest before approximately 400 fans Wednesday night at Municipal Auditorium.
Former Miami Hurricanes guard Eric Washington hit a 15-foot jumper to achieve the target score of 71 in the Elam Ending. That prevented KU from advancing to a Sunday night meeting with in-state rival Wichita State in the TBT’s Elite Eight.
That game would have been played inside what most certainly would’ve been an energized Koch Arena. Instead, it’s Heartfire that moves on to play the WSU team, the AfterShocks, in the Elite Eight of this $1 million winner-take-all tourney.
“It would have been great to play in Wichita. We would have played great in Wichita,” KU coach Sherron Collins said after the Jayhawks lost in the Round of 16 for the third straight year. JHX finished 2-1 in this year’s event.
“I think it would have been great for the state, too,” Collins added.
Collins, the former KU star point guard and current boys basketball coach at Oak Park High School, said the squad of Jayhawks alums learned a valuable lesson in the single-elimination TBT.
“No lead is safe,” he said. “Nobody is safe in this tournament.”
Former KU forward David McCormack scored 15 points on 6-of-9 shooting for JHX Hoops. However, he committed a critical turnover in the Elam Ending.
Former KU guard Zeke Mayo hit a 3-pointer to give KU a 68-66 lead, three points from the target score of 71. Then, with the score 69-68 in Heartfire’s favor, Mayo fired a pass down low to a wide-open McCormack.
McCormack failed to corral the pass, giving Heartfire what turned out to be the game’s final possession.
Washington’s 12-footer over Mayo hit nothing but net and propelled the team of former college all stars, sponsored by Arizona Community Church, to victory.
“We let it slip away from us,” Collins said.
JHX Hoops’ Billy Preston scored 14 points, Mayo 12 and Marcus Bell and Kelvin Amayo seven apiece. Bell was ejected after being whistled for his second technical late in the third quarter. He and Eric Griffin (12 points) were called for a double-technical for shoving each other.
“Little things hurt us tonight,” Collins said.
Mayo, who was 2-of-7 from 3-point range (JHX went 5-of-14 beyond the arc, Heartfire 6-of-27), bemoaned a lost opportunity.
“It was a very frustrating game,” Mayo said. “The game didn’t go the way we wanted it to go … 50-50 balls went in their hands. It (stinks) to lose.”
Mayo said he’d like to play for the KU alumni team in the TBT again next summer.
“The opportunity to play for him was great,” Mayo said of Collins, who was part of the Jayhawks’ 2008 NCAA title team. “It was an honor.”
Former Colorado guard Marcus Hall had 16 points on 6-of-9 shooting for Heartfire.
Collins said he would coach the team again next summer.
“This is a great tournament. It’s great. I mean, I love it and it is good,” he said. “We get to come back and be around these guys who get to be in Lawrence a little bit. We got to play home in KC, so it was great.
“We just wish we could have kept playing.”
As a coach, Collins said he has learned “patience. Being able to coach high-level guys that think the same way, sometimes I saw something and they (players) saw something different, and I had to get out of the way and let it work — and it worked.
“I’m a players coach, so out there they got to see that. And if they see it and they come back, I’ll make adjustments. So it was great learning from those. I think we learned from each other. Trust me, we’ll be back and we’ll be better.”
This story was originally published July 23, 2025 at 9:14 PM with the headline "KU’s JHX Hoops alumni team ousted from TBT in Round of 16: ‘It (stinks) to lose’."
