Kentucky alumni team La Familia is eliminated from The Basketball Tournament
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- Kentucky alumni team La Familia lost in the Round of 16 in The Basketball Tournament.
- La Familia lost to Eberlein Drive at Memorial Coliseum in Lexington.
- La Familia was led in scoring in all three of its TBT games by Archie Goodwin.
La Familia’s run in the 2025 edition of The Basketball Tournament has come to an end.
The team comprised mainly of Kentucky basketball alumni lost the Lexington Regional championship game of the event, 71-70, on Tuesday night to Eberlein Drive. The contest was played in front of another rowdy crowd — including members of the 2025-26 UK men’s basketball team — inside the renovated Memorial Coliseum on UK’s campus.
A wild finishing sequence to the game saw La Familia’s Archie Goodwin miss a potential game-winning free throw before Eberlein Drive won the game with a 3-pointer from Anthony Clemmons, a former Iowa player. The winning shot from Clemmons capped an offensive possession in which Eberlein Drive grabbed two offensive rebounds.
Before Goodwin missed that potential winning free throw, La Familia’s Willie Cauley-Stein was fouled on a drive to the basket and appeared to injure his lower leg. The injury forced Cauley-Stein to check out of the game and allowed Goodwin to check in and attempt the free throws.
The Elam Ending target score for Tuesday’s game was 71. It was set when La Familia held a 63-58 lead.
Before that, it took a major comeback effort for La Familia to be in a position to win. The Kentucky alumni team trailed by 10 points after the first quarter, five points at halftime and six points after the third quarter. La Familia outscored Eberlein Drive 16-5 in the fourth quarter to take the lead prior to the Elam Ending period beginning. This stretch included a 16-0 run by La Familia.
Goodwin, who missed the potential winning free throw, led La Familia in scoring for the third straight game of TBT with 19 points. He totaled 54 points across La Familia’s three TBT games. The UK alums also had Kahlil Whitney (18 points), Cauley-Stein (12) and Andrew Harrison (10) score in double digits.
Eberlein Drive was led by 20 points from Terry Taylor, a former Austin Peay star who played in high school for Bowling Green. Gabe York (15 points) and Nate Watson (14 points and eight rebounds) also scored in double figures for Eberlein Drive.
La Familia went just 3-for-15 (20%) from 3-point range in the game. Eberlein Drive made 10 of its 32 tries from deep (31.3%). Eberlein Drive also won the battle on the glass by a 45-38 margin.
This is the second straight year that La Familia took part in The Basketball Tournament. After losing in the semifinals of last year’s event, La Familia now has fallen short in the round of 16 of this year’s event. The 64-team, single-elimination tournament awards a $1 million grand prize to the winning team.
Eight former UK players that spanned three eras of Kentucky basketball — Ansley Almonor, Cauley-Stein, Goodwin, Aaron Harrison, Andrew Harrison, Doron Lamb, DeAndre Liggins and Whitney — made up this year’s La Familia team, along with Kerem Kanter (the brother of Enes Kanter Freedom), Marques Warrick (a Lexington native who was a star at Henry Clay High School) and DJ Burns (who played in college at Southern, Murray State and Youngstown State).
This year’s La Familia team was coached by Sean Woods, an ex-Cat himself who played at Kentucky from 1988-92 and was a member of the Wildcats’ “Unforgettables” team that reached the Elite Eight of the 1992 NCAA Tournament. Woods is also the new boys basketball head coach at Scott County High School in Georgetown.
“(The team feels) like they lost a game in the NCAA Tournament. It hurts them, just like it did when they played,” Woods said afterward. “Nothing changes with Kentucky basketball. Nothing changes with Big Blue Nation. If we were playing jacks, and it’s us against somebody else, and there’s some familiar faces, Big Blue Nation is going to show up, unlike any other place in the world.”
Woods also said postgame that some injuries limited the depth that La Familia had available in Tuesday’s game.
La Familia knocked off Stroh’s Squad, a Bowling Green State-affiliated team, in the first round of the Lexington Regional. The second round saw La Familia come away with a feisty victory against War Ready, an Auburn-affiliated team.
La Familia and Eberlein Drive were the top two seeds in the Lexington Regional of TBT. La Familia had the right to host the remainder of its games in TBT, all the way through the final, as a result of Louisville’s alumni team, The Ville, losing on Sunday.
That weekend loss took away the potential for a rematch between The Ville and La Familia. Those two squads played a contentious game in Freedom Hall in the Derby City last year that was won by La Familia. Now, both teams are out of the event.
“I’ll tell you who’s hurting even more, is TBT, because they’re not going to get another crowd like this,” Woods said. “They’re not going to get this type of action. They’re not going to get this type of coverage. But, it was a great experience. Unfortunately, it ended like this.”
Eberlein Drive — one of two remaining teams from the inaugural TBT in 2014 and a squad that made the semifinals in last year’s event — will play in the quarterfinals of The Basketball Tournament at 6 p.m. Monday. That matchup will be against either LA Ignite or Sideline Cancer (the team that defeated The Ville) and it will be broadcast on FS1.
A location for that game is still to be determined.
This story was originally published July 22, 2025 at 8:11 PM.
