Saint Joseph’s Booted from Vegas Showcase After Coaching Change

Saint Joseph’s Men’s Basketball will no longer participate in the 2025 Players Era Showcase following the exit of former head coach Billy Lange, who departed the program for a player development role with the New York Knicks on Wednesday, Sept. 10. Per the Hawks announcement, their departure comes as a result of stipulations within the contract agreement drawn up for the showcase, rather than a program decision.

Exiting the tournament, which would have pitted the Hawks against UNLV (Nov. 20) and Syracuse (Nov. 22) in Las Vegas, will leave Saint Joseph’s with a pair of open out-of-conference games to flesh out their 2025-26 schedule, and comes at the cost of Name, Image and Likeness money set aside for participants.

Hawks’ Vice President and Director of Athletics Jill Bodensteiner issued the following statement upon announcing the decision:

“While we are obviously disappointed for our team and our fans to be removed from the Players Era Showcase, we knew from the beginning that our invitation and participation was contingent on Billy Lange being our head coach and proceeded with that risk… we are moving on our contingency plan and are excited to announce those games soon.”