Wendell Green Jr. leads War Ready to first-round win at 'The Basketball Tournament'

For the fourth summer in a row, a basketball team full of former Auburn Tigers will be competing in the annual “TBT” Basketball Tournament.

While the team, fittingly named “War Ready”, hasn’t produced good results in tournaments past, this summer got off to a great start on Friday. Led by point guard Wendell Green Jr., War Ready picked up a win to open up the tournament by defeating the “D2 Waymakers” 80-72 in overtime.

The aforementioned 5-11 guard, who is still just 21 years of age led all scorers in the contest with 22 points. Green Jr. also added 5 assists, 4 rebounds, and 2 steals in the overtime victory. 2019 NCAA Tournament darlings Malik Dunbar and J'von McCormick were the only other former Tigers to score in double figures, scoring 12 and 14 points respectively. The duo shot an extremely impressive 12/16 (75%) from the field.

No other War Ready player scored more than 9 points. Former Tiger star T.J Dunans specifically had a rough go of it. Despite bringing the most experience to the squad, Dunans did not score a point and committed 4 turnovers.

It seems like War Ready will go as far in The Basketball Tournament as the trio of Green Jr., Dunbar, and McCormick take them. While the opening night win is a step in the right direction, the former Tigers have a rough contest up next against No. 1 seed “Herd That”, a team full of Marshall alumni.

We’ll see if the team of Auburn Alumni can pull of the upset when the round of 32 game tips off Sunday at 12 PM CST on Fox Sports 2.

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