The Cancun Challenge is a college basketball tournament organized by Triple Crown Sports which currently features eight NCAA Division I men's basketball 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 Cancún, Mexico. 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 2011–12 Richmond Spiders men's basketball team represented the University of Richmond in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I college basketball during the 2011–12 season. Richmond competed as a member of the Atlantic 10 Conference (A-10) under seventh-year head basketball coach Chris Mooney and played its home games at the Robins Center.