There’s hyperbole, and then there’s whatever TNT Sports studio host Adam Lefkoe said before Wednesday night’s Players Era championship game between Gonzaga and Michigan.
In its second year, Players Era has taken the college basketball world by storm, pitting 18 of the sport’s top teams against each other with millions of dollars in NIL money on the line. It boasts by far the best field of any holiday tournament this season, and TNT has made the event feel really big.
So when both the No. 7 Wolverines and No. 12 Bulldogs won their way into the title game, TNT knew it would be cinema. Right? Well, at least Lefkoe thought so.
During the network’s pregame show, the excitable TNT host made a claim that even he’d probably admit went a little too far.
“We are getting ready for the biggest game of the night. This is, I don’t even think it’s arguable, the best non-conference college basketball game that we have seen in years, I’m talking decades,” Lefkoe declared.
Decades? This isn’t even a top-10 matchup. Now, rankings don’t mean everything, these could be the two best teams in the country for all we know. (KenPom ranks them No. 1 and No. 4, respectively.) But these teams have no history. Like, literally almost no history at all. They’ve played once, in 2019. Michigan won by 18. Surely in the last few decades there’s been a non-conference game of a bit more import.
These are two really good teams. It could even be the best non-conference game of the year. But in decades?
To be fair, both teams are coming off of very convincing wins. Gonzaga beat Maryland by 39 on Tuesday. Michigan has won both of its games in Players Era by 30 or more. There’s reason to think, between each team’s performances and their respective KenPom ratings, that this game will be the class of the 2025 non-conference slate.
But declaring it the best game in at least 20 years before it even tipped off? That is bold. Especially as Michigan takes a 24-point lead into halftime at the time of this writing.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.