A little over a week after Wisconsin basketball general manager Marc VandeWettering hinted at the Badgers returning to a tropical location for their in-season tournament, we finally know their destination.
Wisconsin will travel to Nassau, The Bahamas to compete in the 2026 Baha Mar Hoops Bahamas Championship, Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports reported Thursday. The rest of the four-team field consists of NC State and Seton Hall, with the fourth and final team still TBD.
Given VandeWettering’s hints – including that the tournament would be on a familiar island but a new tournament Wisconsin had yet to participate in – the Bahamas Championship was one of four realistic options, and now, it’s official.
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It’s a four-game tournament, with the winners of the first two games playing each other for the title and the losers partaking in a consolation game – this should represent two high-major games for the Badgers.
Wisconsin will return to a true tropical location for the first time since the 2022-23 season, when they participated in the Battle 4 Atlantis. That wound up being a wildly entertaining Feast Week Tournament, as the Badgers beat Dayton and USC while narrowly loosing to No. 3 Kansas by one point.
Wisconsin could be the top team in Nassau
Back on a warm, sunny island for the first time in three years, Wisconsin could be the premier team in this tournament. The field looks weaker in 2026 after last season featured Purdue, Texas Tech, Memphis and Wake Forest. Of course, we still don’t know the fourth and final participant, but NC State and Seton Hall have both fallen on somewhat hard times.
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The Wolfpack made the Final Four in 2024 under Kevin Keatts, but the following season was a 12-19 disaster and the coach was replaced by Will Wade.
Wade revitalized the program in 2025-26 and the Wolfpack made it to the First Four, but he proceeded to ditch NC State for LSU in a messy breakup. Now, NC State’s roster looks rather gutted.
Seton Hall, meanwhile, is coming off a bounce-back 21-win season under fourth-year head coach Shaheen Holloway, but the Pirates haven’t won an NCAA Tournament game in eight years and will be relying on a roster largely comprised of mid-major transfers.
Badgers schedule coming together
Wisconsin’s 2025-26 schedule is coming together before our eyes. The Badgers know their Big Ten opponents for next season, as well as a handful of their out-of-conference games.
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Wisconsin has out-of-conference tilts lined up with Marquette, Villanova and Auburn, and they’ll play one of either NC State and Seton Hall, if not both depending on how the tournament unfolds. That’s currently five high-major out-of-conference games, which is notable because VandeWettering told Brian Butch that the Badgers’ current scheduling philosophy is six high-major out-of-conference games and six against mid-majors. Thus, it’s feasible that Wisconsin still has one more high-major clash to announce this offseason.
This article was originally published on www.si.com/college/wisconsin as Badgers in The Bahamas: What to Know About Wisconsin’s 2026 In-Season Tournament.
