Portsmouth basketball alums to compete in The Alumni Tournament

Kevin Colley, The Portsmouth Daily Times, OhioWed, July 22, 2026 at 1:19 AM UTC·8 min read

Within the past decade, The Basketball Tournament grew from an idea into a $2 million winner-take-all tournament that has featured the best college alumni from a specific school.

Now, a new idea of a similar ilk is coming to life in Ohio on the high school scale — with the hopes of reaching similar heights.

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Dayton area natives Alex Patten and Richie Moody have formulated their own idea, The Alumni Tournament — which, as of right now, will feature high school basketball alumni representing various schools across the Buckeye State competing for a winner-take-all cash prize in a first of its kind type of tournament.

"I got this idea about four years ago to bring everybody back together," Patten said. "I got the idea from the TBT. There's nobody out there doing a high school one — just a college one. So I took that on, and I got my partner, Ritchie Moody, involved. We've been hitting the ground running from there."

Portsmouth is one of the teams competing in the inaugural Alumni Tournament, with nine players between the Class of 2003 to the Class of 2024 signed up to represent in the tournament.

According to Patten, the goal, in 2027, is to grow the tournament to 64 teams with eight teams in each region. If this can be done, the cash prize, for 2027, will be $50,000 to win.

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"It means everything," Patten said when asked about what it means to have a high school alumni tournament. "It gives old people, new people, young people a chance to reunite with the schools that they came from. People from all over the place love to do those types of things. They love to be able to do that, but nobody's put it together. You've got to have somebody put it together. So for the most part, you just have individual alumni teams, and the schools will put something together within the school, and play a game like that within just to bring everybody back together."

While the tournament is the first of its kind, The Alumni Tournament certainly does not lack for talent in any form.

With Portsmouth alone, the Trojans will have the boys basketball program's leading scorer in its program's history in Ky're Allison, a former Marshall signee and letterwinner, suiting up, as well as Andrew Bendolph and Dion McKinley, who were vital pieces to OHSAA Division III Final Four runs in 2010-11 (Bendolph) and 2010-11 and 2011-12 (McKinley). Bendolph later played at Shawnee State while McKinley has enjoyed a highly respected semi-pro football career.

DeAndre Berry, who has blossomed into a JUCO standout at Lansing Community College and could be in store for a big year there after a strong redshirt freshman season off of the bench, will also be on the roster as will fellow Portsmouth alums Anthony Williams, Forest Johnson, Gerald Froe, Donnovan Breech and Miles Shipp. Williams is listed as the team's general manager.

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Along with Portsmouth, additional rosters that have been released include Dayton Dunbar, Dayton Carroll, Dayton Thurgood Marshall, Anna, Fairborn, Huber Heights Wayne, Sidney, Springfield, Trotwood-Madison, Vandalia Butler, Westerville South and Xenia.

The list of names on those squads jump off the page as well.

Dunbar alum and former McDonald's All-American, Ohio State star and one-and-done talent Daequan Cook, who played for the Miami Heat, Oklahoma City Thunder, Houston Rockets and the Chicago Bulls, enjoyed a 13-year professional basketball career between the NBA and international leagues. He's committed to the event with Dunbar.

So too are fellow Dunbar alums Deontae Hawkins and Aaron Pogue. Hawkins enjoyed a highly productive college basketball career while playing at Illinois State for three years and Boston College during his senior season. Pogue started for three seasons at Cleveland State.

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Westerville South alums Andre and Kaleb Wesson are both on the card as well. The Wesson brothers both played at Ohio State after Kaleb (four-star) and Andre (three-star) racked up various Division I offers. Both players are in their fifth year playing professional basketball overseas.

Huber Heights Wayne has a player who was a Division I athlete in two separate sports on its roster in 6-7 forward Ahmad Wagner. He played college basketball at Iowa for three seasons as a role player, then transferred to Kentucky and played football underneath Youngstown native Mark Stoops, where Wagner started in 2019 as a wide receiver.

Wayne also has D'Mitrik Trice on its roster. The former Wisconsin standout has played professionally overseas for the last five years.

Sidney has Andre Gordon on its squad. Gordon played under Buzz Williams at Texas A&M during all four seasons of his career.

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Trotwood has Amare Davis at its disposal. Davis played at Wisconsin-Green Bay, Missouri and Wright State, and averaged 15.9 and 17.2 points per game in his first two seasons of college ball at Green Bay.

Thurgood Marshall has Mark Alstork. Alstork played for Ball State, Wright State and Illinois, averaging 19 points a game at Wright State during his junior season of college basketball in 2016-17.

There's even a Harlem Globetrotter in the event. Thurgood Marshall has 'Jumpin' Joe Ballard, who played for Glenville State in West Virginia before joining the Globetrotters, and — according to the official Harlem Globetrotter website — had a 52-inch vertical.

"There's not that many teams, but man, the competition is terrific," Patten said. "This is exactly what we need to promote this. We want to use this year as a proven concept to get the ball rolling even more. A lot of people love the idea, but it's the whole concept of being invited to a party, and you ask, 'Okay, who's over there?' For me, it doesn't really matter who's over there. It's simply, 'Do you want to be a part of it or not?'"

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For 2026, Centerville High School in Dayton will host one regional site, while Findlay will be the additional regional host. Xenia's Athletes in Action location will be the 2026 The Alumni Tournament Finals host, with the finals to take place on Aug. 22 and Aug. 23.

"We wanted to do it at a neutral site to limit favoritism to a particular school or team, so we'll be at Athletes in Action for the finals," Patten said.

Portsmouth will compete in the Findlay regional the weekend prior to the final site in the hopes of advancing.

"We were originally planning to have eight regions, but with everybody not getting wind of this right away, we're going to stick with the two-region format (in 2026)," Patten said. "It's more accessible for me to be able to do what I need to do, and if anything goes wrong, I can fix it for future years. That's the plan."

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Patten is already planning out details for 2027. The expectation is that The Alumni Tournament will have the full eight regions that were originally planned — Akron, Athens, Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, Dayton, Findlay and Toledo — for next year's event with eight teams set to each region, comprising the entire 64-team field. The regional champion would then advance to the final site where the eight regional champions would play in the finals.

According to Patten, Portsmouth will be the host site of the Athens Regional in 2027. The plan, Patten said, is to start promoting for the 2027 tournament in October 2026.

"A lot of people are understanding it now and what's coming about," Patten said. "There's not as many teams as we would like this year, but as word has spread about this, everybody and their Mom has been calling us trying to get in. It's a little too late and we need some time to get everything together, but next year, it's going to be ten-fold with the 64 teams. We don't quite have 64 this year, but we'll have 64 next year. We're still going to have the tournament this year."

Patten said that Tennessee, Florida, Kentucky, Indiana and New York are all ready to do their own alumni tournaments, but he plans to roll them out in the coming years after seeing what works and what needs to be fixed with Ohio's.

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"I want to make sure that Ohio goes right," Patten said. "I don't want to do multiple states at once and fail at them all. We're doing Ohio first. Tennessee will be the next one, and that will be scheduled for 2028. I need a year-and-a-half of promotion from within the state to go how it wants to go."

Eventually, Patten's ideal look for The Alumni Tournament is an all-encompassing, 50-state deal where the champion of each state would compete nationally in what he called a "champions tournament."

"My end game is 50 states," Patten said. "I want to get all states involved. I want to do like I'm doing in Ohio, and then have a champions tournament off of the 50 winners. Whatever the cash prize is, it'll end up going up in years to come once the corporate sponsors get attached to it, but next year, we're planning on $50K (in Ohio), and then going up from there. The champions tournament will probably be a little bit more than that."

For more information, visit The Alumni Tournament website at https://www.thealumnitournament.com/ or follow The Alumni Tournament page on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/p/The-Alumni-Tournament-100088475402135/.

Story byThe Portsmouth Daily Times, Ohio