The Cancun Challenge () is a college basketball tournament organized by Triple Crown Sports which currently features eight
NCAA
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates College athletics in the United States, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and Simon Fraser University, 1 in Canada. ...
Division I men's basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appro ...
teams and ten women's basketball teams. The formats of the men's and women's tournaments have varied from year to year. The men's tournament currently splits the eight teams into two divisions of four and consists of games played in the United States at participants' campus sites followed by a bracketed tournament played in (or near)
Cancún
Cancún is the most populous city in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, located in southeast Mexico on the northeast coast of the Yucatán Peninsula. It is a significant tourist destination in Mexico and the seat of the municipality of Benito J ...
,
Mexico
Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...
. The women's tournament splits the ten teams into one division of six and one division of four and each features
round-robin play in Cancún with no bracket, and therefore no champion. The two divisions in each tournament are the Riviera Division and the Mayan Division.
The Mexico portion of the event has been held at multiple venues in and around Cancún. The inaugural 2005 tournament was relocated from the Moon Palace Resort to the Aventura Spa Palace Resort in
Playa del Carmen
Playa del Carmen, known colloquially as Playa, is a resort city located along the Caribbean Sea in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, Mexico. It is part of the municipality of Solidaridad. As of 2020, the city's population was just over 3 ...
shortly before it was scheduled to occur due to damage sustained at the original location from
Hurricane Wilma
Hurricane Wilma was the most intense tropical cyclone in the Atlantic basin and the second-most intense tropical cyclone in the Western Hemisphere, both based on barometric pressure, after Hurricane Patricia in 2015. Wilma's rapid intensifi ...
. The tournament was held at one of these two sites each year up until 2014, when it would be moved to the Hard Rock Hotel Riviera Maya, where it has been held since.
CBS Sports Network
CBS Sports Network (a.k.a. CBSSN) is an American digital cable and satellite television network owned by the CBS Entertainment Group unit of Paramount Global. When it launched in 2002 as the National College Sports Network (later College Sports ...
televises the men's Riviera Division games. All Mexico games in the men's Mayan Division along with all women's games are streamed on FloHoops.
Previous men's champions include Vanderbilt (2008), Kentucky (2009), Missouri (2010), Illinois (2011), Wichita State (2012), Wisconsin (2013), Northern Iowa (2014), Maryland (2015), Purdue (2016), LA Tech (2017), Bradley (2018), West Virginia (2019), Clemson (2020), Saint Louis (2021) and Auburn (2022). Previous women's participating teams include marquee programs such as Arizona State, Baylor, Duke, Georgia Tech, Iowa, Iowa State, Kansas State, Maryland, Oklahoma, Purdue, Seton Hall, Stanford, UCLA, and Washington, among others.
Brackets
* – Denotes overtime period
2024
Men's
= Riviera Division
=
= Mayan Division
=
Women's
=Mayan Division
=
=Riviera Division
=
2023
Men's
= Riviera Division
=
= Mayan Division
=
Women's
=Riviera Division
=
=Mayan Division
=
2022
Men's
= Riviera Division
=
= Mayan Division
=
2021
Men's
= Riviera Division
=
= Mayan Division
=
Women's
All games streamed on FloHoops.com
=Mayan Division
=
=Riviera Division
=
2020 Space Coast Classic
Due to
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
the 2020 Cancún Challenge was not held, instead a 4 team tournament was branded as the Space Coast Challenge, games were played at
Titan Field House in
Melbourne, FL.
2019
Men's
=Riviera Division
=
=Mayan Division
=
Women's
=Riviera Division
=
=Mayan Division
=
2018
Men's
=Riviera Division
=
=Mayan Division
=
Women's
Riviera Division
Mayan Division
2017
Men's
=Riviera Division
=
=Mayan Division
=
Women's
=Riviera Division
=
=Mayan Division
=
2016
Men's
=Riviera Division
=
=Mayan Division
=
Women's
=Riviera Division
=
=Mayan Division
=
2015
Men's
=Riviera Division
=
=Mayan Division
=
Women's
=Riviera Division
=
=Mayan Division
=
2014
Men's
=Riviera Division
=
=Mayan Division
=
Women's
=Riviera Division
=
=Mayan Division
=
2013
Men's
=Riviera Division
=
=Mayan Division
=
Women's
=Riviera Division
=
=Mayan Division
=
2012
Men's
=Riviera Division
=
=Mayan Division
=
2011
Men's
=Riviera Division
=
=Mayan Division
=
2010
Men's
=Riviera Division
=
Mayan Division
2009
Men's
=Riviera Division
=
=Mayan Division
=
2008
Men's
=Riviera Division
=
References
External links
Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cancun Challenge
College basketball competitions
College men's basketball competitions in the United States
College women's basketball competitions in the United States
Basketball competitions in Mexico
Sport in Cancún
2008 establishments in Mexico
Recurring sporting events established in 2008