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For the 2017-18 season, Shaka Smart’s Texas Longhorns will be among 16 teams from around the nation to be featured in the first-ever Phil Knight Invitational in advance of the Nike co-founder’s 80th birthday.
In addition to Texas, the tournament will include Arkansas, Butler, Connecticut, Duke, Florida, Georgetown, Gonzaga, Michigan State, North Carolina, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Oregon, Portland, Portland State, and Stanford.
The three-day tournament, which is set to take place over the Thanksgiving weekend 2017 — Thursday, No. 23, Friday, Nov. 24 and Sunday, Nov. 26 — will be among the largest regular season tournaments in college basketball history. There will be two eight-team events and each team will play three games.
"We are very appreciative of our relationship with Phil Knight and Nike," Shaka Smart said. "Obviously, this relationship has grown tremendously over the last decade with Nike's support of Texas and Kevin Durant and provided so many benefits for our student-athletes and UT as a whole. We are really excited about the opportunity to participate in the PK80 event in Portland next Thanksgiving and to be able to compete against such a great field of quality opponents."