photo by: The Basketball Tournament

Mass Street's Frank Mason takes an off-balance shot against Team Colorado on Wednesday, July 24, 2024, in Wichita.

This summer, Kansas fans will have to reckon with the uncomfortable reality of seeing one of the greatest Jayhawks ever wearing another college team’s colors.

The Basketball Tournament on Wednesday morning announced what it called “A HUGE TBT Commitment Flip”: Frank Mason III, KU’s former national player of the year and consensus first-team All-American, will be playing for Boeheim’s Army, a Syracuse alumni team.

There is, of course, still a KU alumni team, JHX Hoops, also competing in TBT. Mason played for the team’s predecessor, Mass Street, last summer, averaging 18 points and five assists per game as he led the former Jayhawks to the third round. He had never been officially announced as one of this year’s JHX players, but he posted on X on June 4 about some T-shirts bearing his signature that he wanted to give to KU fans at the Kansas City regional next month.

Instead he’ll be playing at Syracuse’s Onondaga Community College with No. 1 seed Boeheim’s Army, serving the role for the former Orange of “someone we could trust with the ball in their hands and the game on the line,” as general manager Shaun Belbey told Syracuse.com on Wednesday morning.

He won’t intersect with the former Jayhawks unless the two teams make it all the way to the TBT semifinals.

How did this happen? To start, Belbey said in the same Syracuse.com article that “he met Mason six or seven years ago through the same person who introduced him to (former Richmond and current Boeheim’s Army guard Jacob) Gilyard.”

A source close to JHX Hoops told the Journal-World on Wednesday that Boeheim’s Army had donors with “deep pockets” who enticed Mason to join their team with a more lucrative financial offer.

Mason didn’t make any public statement about his decision and efforts to reach him for comment were unsuccessful. Belbey, for his part, made initial contact with the Journal-World but did not respond to additional text messages and phone calls on Wednesday and Thursday seeking comment.

JHX Hoops was still able to make a big-name addition on Tuesday in former national-championship hero David McCormack, who will be a first-time TBT participant. He has been playing for Alba Berlin in Germany. The other team members include Cliff Alexander, Billy Preston, Nick Timberlake, Jamari Traylor, Lagerald Vick and Kevin Young, with Sherron Collins as head coach and Tyshawn Taylor as one of the organizers.

Mason played in China and Puerto Rico during the 2024-25 season. He isn’t the only former Jayhawk on a rival team, as Cam Martin is playing for the Kansas State alumni team Purple Reign.