Aloha!
The bracket for this fall's Maui Invitational was released Tuesday morning, and it is a good one, complete with a Big Ten representative in the Wisconsin Badgers.
Greg Gard's team will enter the 2016-17 campaign as one of the favorites in the Big Ten, returning all five starters, and Maui will be one of the first chances to show off the squad.
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The Badgers start things off in the Aloha State with a game against Tennessee on Nov. 21. Win that one, and it's a date with the winner of the Georgetown-Oregon game. Keep winning, and the championship opponent will be one of these four teams: North Carolina, UConn, Oklahoma State and Chaminade.
Here's a look at the bracket:
That is an absolutely loaded field, with three teams that played in last season's Sweet Sixteen in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Oregon. The Tar Heels reached the national championship game, and both North Carolina and Oregon were No. 1 seeds in the NCAA tournament. UConn was also a part of the NCAA tournament field last season.
Wisconsin and Tennessee have met three times in the past, with the Badgers winning just one of those games, the most recent meeting in 2001.
Big Ten
A second-round matchup against Georgetown for Wisconsin would be a rematch of last season's game at Madison Square Garden, a win for the Hoyas. The teams played in the Bahamas the year prior, a win for the Badgers. Meanwhile, a second-round matchup between the Badgers and Ducks would be a rematch of the Round of 32 game in the 2015 NCAA tournament, a game Wisconsin won in its march to a second straight Final Four.
Certainly, North Carolina would be Wisconsin's highest-profile opponent in a potential championship game appearance. That would be a battle between the last two national runners-up and a rematch of the Sweet Sixteen game from the 2015 Big Dance, won by the Badgers.