At least one school still really wants to be in the Southwest Maui Invitational.

This week’s official bracket unveiling of the 2025 edition of the traditionally loaded early season tournament was met with raised eyebrows by followers of college hoops. Stacked field? Not quite.

It was already known that three of the eight schools originally committed for November’s competition at the Lahaina Civic Center decided to pull out in favor of a more lucrative event, the Players Era Festival in Las Vegas, which pays out at least $1 million per participant in Name, Image and Likeness deals for its players.

What You Need To Know

The Southwest Maui Invitational announced its bracket pairings this week for nationally televised play Nov. 24 to 26 at the Lahaina Civic Center

Tournament host Chaminade is poised to make its long-awaited return to Maui after last playing a tournament game there in 2019 due to outside factors like COVID-19 and the Lahaina wildfires

Chaminade drew Washington State, one of three replacement teams brought in by tournament runner KemperSports Live after Oregon, Baylor and UNLV defected to the lucrative Players Era Festival in Las Vegas

Silverswords coach Eric Bovaird told Spectrum News that his team welcomes any opponent in the program’s signature event and was reassured by tournament chair Dave Odom that future fields will be strong

Tournament runner KemperSports Live replaced defectors Oregon, Baylor and UNLV — some of the headliners of the field — with Arizona State, Washington State and Boise State.

The first-round pairings on Nov. 24: Seton Hall versus North Carolina State; USC versus Boise State; Washington State versus Chaminade; and Texas versus Arizona State.

Maui’s Division II host will never say no to a Valley Isle return. Chaminade, which counts on the tournament for prestige and recruiting opportunities, has been rotated out of the field in alternating years since 2018 and has not actually appeared in a game on Maui since 2019 due to outside factors — COVID-19 and the deadly Lahaina wildfires.

The Silverswords usually get a crack at a blue blood-caliber foe on the first day of the tournament. This time they get Maui debutant WSU, a holdover member of the deconstructed Pac-12.

“We’re excited, no matter what team we drew,” Silverswords coach Eric Bovaird told Spectrum News in a phone interview.

Tournament chair Dave Odom talked up the field in the official news release: “The 2025 Southwest Maui Invitational features yet another competitive field and includes three teams making their tournament debut and two previous tournament champions. There’s truly nothing like the energy and atmosphere that fills the Lahaina Civic Center each November, and we are excited for each of these programs to add to this iconic tournament’s history as they look to deliver Maui Magic for college basketball fans on-island and at-large.”

But there’s no getting around that it’s been a tough several months for the traditional eight-team multi-team event model, especially in Hawaii.

ESPN’s family of networks will still carry all 12 games of the Maui Invitational in its 42nd year, but Maui will go head to head all three days with the second-year Players Era Festival, featuring 18 prominent programs, on TNT Sports. In addition to its advantage with payouts to programs, the Players Era Festival has so far bypassed traditional muti-team event rules that restrict schools to one appearance only every four years in one event.

Meanwhile, the Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic, the University of Hawaii’s nationally televised holiday tournament that was set to shift to Feast Week in November, was instead placed on hiatus by ESPN Events and it is not clear when or if it will return.

Bovaird said he spoke to Odom recently and relayed that the legendary Wake Forest coach was confident the next three Maui fields will be strong.

The 2026 field has been reported as Arizona, Maryland, Notre Dame, Providence, Ole Miss, BYU, VCU plus a team to be named.

“What I’m hearing is that there’s always going to be a need and a desire to come to Maui,” said Bovaird, Chaminade’s longest-tenured hoops coach who is entering his 15th season. “Now, you may go to Las Vegas, and you know, you may get a certain amount of money for your NIL stuff and so forth, but there’s always a demand to want to come to Maui.”

The prolonged absence from Maui has only grown Chaminade’s appetite for its ninth all-time upset of a Division I school in the event.

Chaminade played the 2021 tournament in Las Vegas amid the pandemic and the 2023 edition was moved to the Stan Sheriff Center on Oahu three months after the Lahaina fires.

“It’s been too long … due to unfortunate circumstances,” Bovaird said. “There’s no doubt about that.

“(It’s been) a whole cycle of recruits,” he added. “Some of them that have been here four years that never even got the chance to play in Maui.”

It will be the first tournament since the passing of legendary Chaminade coach Merv Lopes, whose NAIA Silverswords upset top-ranked Virginia in December 1982, leading to the creation of the Silversword Invitational, later known as the Maui Classic and finally the Maui Invitational. Lopes died in May at age 92.

Southwest was announced as Maui’s title sponsor in March.

Brian McInnis covers the state’s sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.