NCAA Basketball: 2023 Rady Children’s Invitational preview, predictions

Early-season tournaments are in full swing, and the inaugural Rady Children’s Invitational tips off on Thursday, Nov. 23 through Friday, Nov. 24.

Feast Week is always an exciting time of the year. From unique venues to back-to-back-to-back games to Elite Eight/Final Four-caliber matchups, it serves as a tremendous growing opportunity and experience for numerous programs with resume-boosting implications on the line.

And for us college basketball fans, it offers a week full of entertaining, competitive, and highly-touted matchups that will almost certainly be talked about when Selection Sunday rolls around.

Just last year, we saw tremendous games such as Creighton’s 3-point win over Arkansas in a Maui Invitational thriller, Bobby Pettiford’s (seemingly improbable) game-winning put-back/reverse layup over Wisconsin in the Battle 4 Atlantis, Virginia’s 56-point second half in a win over Baylor in the Continental Main Tire Event and Alabama’s 4 OT win over North Carolina in the Phil Knight Invitational.

With 2023 Feast Week now in full swing, the first-ever Rady Children’s Invitational — headlined by the Oklahoma Sooners, Iowa Hawkeyes, Seton Hall Pirates and USC Trojans — will take place on Nov. 23 through Nov. 24 at LionTree Arena in San Diego, California.

Although the Rady Children’s Invitational will not get similar buzz to the likes of the Maui Invitational, the Battle 4 Atlantis or the ESPN Events Invitational, four high-quality, NCAA Tournament-caliber teams will take the floor in sunny San Diego with hopes of creating resume-building, early-season momentum as the 2023-24 college basketball season quickly moves along.

Here, we will preview all four of the teams and give insight into our predictions for the event. While it may look like USC is the initial favorite here, it is certainly feasible that any of the other three teams (Oklahoma, Iowa, Seton Hall) can leave the event victorious. In a two-day, two-games-a-piece event, anything can happen. In other words, it’s college basketball — expect for the unexpected.