The George Washington University men's basketball is set to take on Boise State in the opening round of the inaugural College Basketball Crown on Monday afternoon inside the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. The game is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. EDT with live coverage on Fox Sports 1.
GW is back in the postseason for the first time since 2017 when it advanced to the second round of the College Basketball Invitational Tournament (CBI). This season, the Buff & Blue recorded the 16th 20-win campaign in the program's 111 years, doing so for the first time in eight years (2016-17) and tallying 20 regular-season wins for the first time since 2015-16. GW also won a game in the Atlantic 10 Championship tournament for the first time since 2020-21.
Postseason history
The Crown represents GW's 20th appearance in postseason history, joining 11 trips to the NCAA Tournament, six to the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) and a pair of CBI appearances. GW's last win in the postseason came in the 2017 CBI over Toledo at the Smith Center. This will be GW's first neutral-site postseason event since winning the 2016 NIT at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
A look at the Broncos
One of the first four teams out of the NCAA Tournament, Boise State advanced to the Mountain West Championship game before falling to Colorado State, who recently advanced to the NCAA Round of 32. The Broncos feature a balanced attack headlined by a trio of double-digit scorers in Tyson Degenhart at 17.9 points per game, Andrew Meadow at 12.5 and Alvaro Cardenas at 11.7.
Cardenas is seventh in the country with 7.0 assists per game while Boise as a team assists on 56% of its made field goals. Outside of the top three, eight different players average between 10-20 minutes per game and 2.0 - 9.0 points per game.
The Broncos rank 10th nationally in rebounding margin (+8.8), are 19th in free throw percentage (77.7%) and 33rd in scoring defense (66.1 ppg).
A potential look ahead
Should GW advance, it would take on the winner of Utah and Butler on Wednesday. The Buff & Blue have never faced the Utes and only faced Butler once as conference foes in 2013, when GW defeated the Bulldogs in Butler's only season in the A-10.