Back in February I told you about the IBM Basketball League starting up again. Well, we're actually well into the double-elimination tournament now with the finals being decided just last night and you'll be happy to hear that yours truly is headed there!
The road to the finals wasn't easy. First of all, our team is not big to begin with. The only player we have over 6' is my friend Dan and he's not a guy that takes up a lot of space on the court; he's more the tall and lanky type. Most teams will likely have at least two players over 6' or a handful of stocky guys who fill up the lane. Speed is our game and we rely on good outside shooting to win games...we're like the Golden State Warriors of this league haha. On this team, I'm the MVD (Most Valuable Defender). Although I have a killer 3-pointer and can create my own shot, my biggest value to the team is on the defensive end. I'm usually called on to guard the best perimeter player, which is usually the other team's best offensive player. We struggled during the regular season as we were still searching for our offensive chemistry and tinkering with our defensive gameplan and entered the tournament as the 5th seed with a 3-4 record.
Our first game in the tournament went well. I held their scorer to 10 points and the other offensive player on their team was held in check to 11 (nice work Dan). Our team walked away to a comfortable 49-38 victory.
The second game was pretty tough and close the whole way. I guarded their top player and held him to 11 points, but this game basically came down to the last shot. We had the ball with about 20 seconds left and one of our shooters - Darren - made a tough shot along the baseline to put us ahead by 1 point with 4 seconds left. They were unable to make the half-court heave to win the game and we squeaked out a win against the #1 seed that had been undefeated up to that point.
The third game we started out of the gates really slow, scoring only 18 points in the first half. In the second half, we all turned it up a notch and played more aggressively. I also caught fire and single-handily put together a 9-0 run where I knocked down three treys in a row to help get us back in the game. However it once again came down to the end. With 12 seconds left we were up by 2 and their best player made a tough shot to tie the game with 2 seconds left. We quickly called timeout. In overtime, our games are determined by free throws: whichever 5 are on the court at the end of regulation, those 5 will shoot free-throws and then it's just whichever team knocks down the most of their 5 free throws. During the timeout, I pulled out Dan and myself (I had been struggling mentally at the line to knock down free throws all season). It turned out to be the right call though as we went on to win in double-overtime! Me holding the best player on the opposing team (arguably the 2nd best overall player in the league) to less than 20 pts was the goal: he had 18 for the night.
So now it's on to the Finals match. What's so great about being here this year is that nobody in the league expected us to be here due to our lack of size. For my captain Jose and his good buddy Tommy that he's played alongside for 8 of 9 years, it will be their first ever Finals appearance. For me, it will be my 4th appearance in 6 years, although I have been denied the Title in my other 3 attempts. :( We'll play the team we played the second game of the tournament, whose only loss this year was to us. It won't be easy because of their size, but the championship game is played on a full-size regulation court instead of the small-court that we usually play on, and that will only help our quickness and allow us to really spread out the floor with our 3-point shooters. We'll also have two chances to put them away since we haven't lost a game in the tourney yet and it's double elimination. Hopefully we won't need to play that second game....
Wish me luck for next Monday, the 10th of May! I'll try and provide some pictures and hopefully I'll be bringing home a trophy as well! :)
