Final Basketball Update

Last week was the DBS Sports and Societies Awards Banquet, as well as the All-Ireland Intervarsities tournament. This tournament was the final basketball commitment I had for this year. But let's start with the banquet first.

Alisa and I at the banquet

DBS held the banquet last Thursday night at the Conrad, a 5-star hotel over near St. Stephen's Green. It was a pretty swanky place, so it gave Alisa and I a chance to play dress-up. The banquet was nice enough like*. Our team cleaned up on the awards, picking up Coach of the Year and Team of the Year. I was also lucky enough to win MVP, which was pretty nice. While most of the Irish people stayed at the hotel and got pretty messy as the Irish do, Alisa and I headed home early. She had work and I had the varsities tournament the next day.

After winning the MVP

The Intervarsities (or varisities) is a tournament where the best basketball playing colleges from all of Ireland come together for a weekend. It starts with pool play, then moves to a knockout-style playoff format. We won our pool, so we made it to the final round of 8. But because of the crappy draw we had to face the 3rd best team in the quarterfinals and and the 2nd best team in the semifinal.  In total it ended up being lots of games with 1 Friday night, and 2 on both Saturday and Sunday.

In the quarterfinal on Saturday we played the team we beat earlier in the league final, Cork IT. It was a close game early in the 3rd quarter when I jumped for a rebound and landed on somebodies foot. I wrecked my ankle and had to be helped off the court. I missed the rest of the game, but fortunately my teammates pulled out the victory. Our semifinal game against Carlow was at 9:30 the next morning, so I went home to rest.

When I got up in the morning my ankle was very swollen and blue. I could barely walk, but I brought my bball stuff just in case. The athletic trainer looked at it and said I hadn't torn any ligaments, just tendons. I had her wrap it up real tight, in case my team needed me.

I didn't start, but ended up playing most of the game against Carlow. We were down 8 going into the 4th quarter, and I had yet to score. I was in a lot of pain and could barely move. But I decided this was my last shot at organized bball for awhile so I figured I might as well get some shots up. I made some shots, and with about 25 seconds to go we had the ball down 4 points. One of my teammates made a boneheaded move and got called for the obvious travel, which gave the other team the ball. Things were looking pretty bleak at that point.

I should mention there were a lot of people watching our game because us and Carlow were the best teams in the Division 2 tournament. Carlow is actually Division 1, but for some reason they played down. Anyway, there were lots of people watching, and they all wanted Carlow to win. This is because everybody knew that DBS brought over me and Glenn. Apparently this pissed off the rest of Ireland, so the whole place was rooting for Carlow.

All the fans were pretty happy at this point, yelling things that I'd rather not write here. We came out playing tough defense, forcing a turnover on the inbounds pass. As our player was trying to pass ahead to Glenn he was tackled from behind by a Carlow player. The refs called an intentional foul, so we got 2 shots and the ball. Luckily we hit both free throws and now had the ball down 2. We inbounded the ball, but Carlow was playing really good defense. Finally I got open and caught the ball on the 3-point line. I immediately shot it in some big guys face, and it went in to put us up 1 with ten seconds to go. Carlow called timeout to draw up a play, and I switched onto their best guard because everybody in the gym knew the ball was going to him. He got the ball and tried to drive around me, but because I'm so tall he couldn't get where he wanted to get. He ended up shooting a fingerroll by reaching around me from about the free throw line. This shot hit the side of the backboard and ricocheted right to their big man. He put up a mildly contested layup that rolled off the rim and I grabbed the board and got fouled with 2 seconds to go. At this point their coach went nuts, yelling at the refs saying they were less than great and that my 3 was "way inside the line". He swiftly got 4 technicals and was kicked out of the gym.

We hit a bunch of the free throws and won by 7 or 8. It was a pretty crazy comeback, something I haven't been a part of since as long as I can remember. The coach later apologized to me, he thought I was inside the line because I was inside an orange line on the court, but the bball 3-point line was red. My 3-pt shot was about 3 feet behind that line...it was a ridiculous argument to the refs at the time!

After the semis we played in the final against a team that isn't all that great. We were never really pressed and ended up winning by 25. It was great to win the tournament though because DBS brought me and Glenn over for this, and I feel like I've gotten the better end of the deal by far. But DBS is happy, so therefore I'm happy. Now I can concentrate on school and getting my ankle better. It is really swollen and blue on both the inside and outside. Luckily it's the right ankle this time. I severely injured the left one a couple months back.

After wining the Intervarsities Division 2

*"nice enough like" or "handy enough like" is quickly becoming one of my favorite popular Irish sayings because it sounds so ridiculous to end a sentence with the word 'like'.