How the Hoops for St. Jude Tip Off Classic came together

It took 15 years, but the Hoops for St. Jude Tip Off Classic has finally come to fruition.

An event with Memphis basketball had always pondered in the minds of St. Jude executives ever since Richard Shadyac Jr., president and CEO of ALSAC, St. Jude’s official fundraising and awareness organization, arrived in July 2009. ALSAC senior vice president Chris Boysen, a University of Memphis graduate, was fully on board from the beginning.

After all, the city has longstanding romances with both basketball and beating childhood cancer. The two seemingly fit each other like a glove.

But the idea was merely, well, an idea for the longest time.

Former Memphis staffer Garrett Kelly, however, helped change everything last November. He got Boysen in front of the right people before a game—namely Memphis president Bill Hardgrave and former athletic director Laird Veatch—and St. Jude’s vision quickly became a reality.

“Everybody loved the idea. Penny [Hardaway] fully endorsed it,” Boysen told Bluff City Media Thursday.

Ten months later, that reality morphed into Thursday’s announcement of an exhibition between Penny Hardaway’s Tigers and North Carolina on Oct. 15 inside FedExForum (6 p.m., ESPNU). Alex Simmons and the Lady Tigers will also take part in the evening’s festivities with their own scrimmage against defending national champion South Carolina (8:30 p.m., ESPN+). Proceeds from the charity event will go towards St. Jude.

“We’re always looking to do things to amplify our mission. We’re looking for different audiences to get in front of, and different ways to talk about St. Jude. This fit the bill on a number of fronts for us,” Boysen said. “It takes us into a slightly difference demographic than our donor base. We have a primarily female donor base, and about 70% of viewers on ESPN of men’s college basketball are male. We like that. 62% of women’s college basketball [viewers] are male. It’s [also] a slightly younger demographic for us.”

St. Jude and ALSAC’s work with this is far from over, though. Its long term goal is to eventually turn the Hoops for St. Jude Tip Off Classic into an in-season tournament similar to the Maui Invitational or Battle 4 Atlantis. Boysen and Co. already laid out the foundations for those plans by collaborating with Battle 4 Atlantis founder Lea Miller-Tooley to organize this year’s event.

“We wouldn’t be St. Jude if we didn’t think big. We look at events like the Maui Invitational and the Battle 4 Atlantis and think there’s an opportunity to do something similar here. That’s been the goal and the vision from the beginning,” Boysen said. “When we started this planning back in November and December, schedules were largely already set. These teams commit to these events years in advance, so that may take a little bit of a ramp-up phase. But we wanna get to more of a multi-team event here in Memphis.”

Bluff City Collective director Hunter Story saw a chance to think even bigger.

Other schools have done charity exhibitions in recent years, but none of them implemented things like a television broadcast or name, image and likeness (NIL). Story knew that Memphis could use those aspects to expand upon what those games had accomplished, and Boysen just so happened to be a longtime acquaintance.

All it took were a few phone calls to make Bluff City Collective an official partner for the event.

“St. Jude is the most trusted brand, for-profit and non-profit, in the United States. It resides in Memphis. This wave of charity exhibitions began. But they are off-camera, not really ‘events’ in the traditional sense,” Story said. “The opportunity was there and just made sense. I think it’s simple when you take it all in a vacuum. And for both sides [the school and ALSAC] it made sense.”

It’d be remiss to think that basketball, money and TV contracts are the driving forces behind this event, however. They’re not Memphis’ why, and they’ve definitely never been St. Jude’s why.

“Our why is always pretty simple. It’s the patients and families at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Our why is helping ensure no family ever receives a bill from St. Jude—not for treatment, travel, housing or food. We want our families to be able to focus on their child and helping their child live. That’s our bottom-line why,” Boysen said.

All three participating schools will visit St. Jude patients as part of the event. Memphis’ visit is scheduled for sometime later this month, while both UNC and South Carolina will be on campus on Oct. 14.

Hardaway’s club also visited patients last year, and St. Jude brought along Nick London, son of former Tiger Paris London. Nick was once on track to becoming a basketball star like his father, but he later got struck by cancer and is now a former St. Jude patient.

“Nick was able to get in front of [the team] as one of their peers to share his story, and how his prospective shifted and how suddenly he was just fighting for his life,” Boysen said. “I think it made a big impact on the players. You could feel that energy in that room. You could’ve heard a pin drop as Nick was talking about his story.”

St. Jude also recognizes the opportunity this is for Memphis as a whole. The chance to make this an annual event could do wonders for the 901, especially if it becomes an in-season tournament like St. Jude is planning. So Boysen and ALSAC are urging Memphians to support the Hoops for St. Jude Tip Off Classic as much as possible.

This year’s event is essentially a beta project. It’s up to Memphis to help make the finished product.

General ticket sales begin Saturday at 10 a.m. via Ticketmaster.

“I think the other thing that’s really important here is the light that it’s gonna shine on the city. We do that through the FedEx St. Jude Championship. We do that through the St. Jude Memphis Marathon. We wanna do that here with this event,” Boysen said. “We want it to be good for the city, and also good for St. Jude.”