LOOK: Michigan State to don special uniforms for the PK80 Invitational next week

By
Alex Muller
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The Michigan State men’s basketball team has been given the great luxury of playing in the commemorative ‘PK80’ tournament, or the Phil Knight Invitational. The newest of the early-season college basketball tournaments is to celebrate the 80th birthday of Nike co-founder Phil Knight and is to be played out in Knight’s hometown of Portland, Oregon.

The tournament — consisting of 16 teams in two, eight-team brackets — begins on Thanksgiving next week. Michigan State and the other 15 Nike-sponsored schools invited will be donning some special uniforms to honor Mr. Knight.

Michigan State is no stranger to sporting the color bronze with alternate uniforms. Back in the 2012-13 season, they wore all-green uniforms with the Spartan logo, numbers and name plating all in bronze. Then for one game in February of 2014 against Georgetown, they wore special all-bronze uniforms with the lettering and numbers in green.

Both sets of uniforms were part of the ‘Hyper Elite‘ package provided by Nike.

The tournament itself will begin on Thanksgiving with the championship games of each bracket being played on Sunday (no games on Saturday). Each team is guaranteed three games throughout the weekend. MSU is slotted into the ‘Victory Bracket’ with another national power, defending champion North Carolina. Should the Spartans and Tar Heels win their first two games, they would oppose one another on Sunday.

Michigan State’s first game of the PK80 Invite will be against DePaul on Thanksgiving. A win over the Blue Demons would set them up against either Connecticut or Oregon. All of the PK80 games can be seen on the ESPN family of networks.

But before all of that takes place, the Spartans will have to first take care of Stony Brook this Sunday.