By DARREN WILCOX
March Madness has officially arrived. I know it from the sound of bodies slamming together, of referee whistles blowing, of players talking trash as they go to the hole. It’s tournament time again.
Intramural tournament time.
Sure, there are lots of intramural sports and most of them do have tournaments. But nothing compares in size or intensity to the annual tradition that is the BYU Intramural Basketball Tournament. It’s a time every gym rat on campus looks forward to, as he or she is allowed a 1-in-300 chance to win the ultimate prize, the Holy Grail of BYU: the intramural T-shirt.
I have my shirt already. My first year at BYU my teammates and I went on a hot streak, rattled off a string of victories and walked away from the tournament as winners. My team was lucky. We were demoted to 1A where we played against teams who were lucky to dribble down the court without losing the ball out of bounds.
But that’s not the issue, for now you can throw out the records. Unlike the NCAA tournament, which rewards teams with good seeds and easy opponents based on their record, the intramural tournament seeds no one. Roll the dice and hope you don’t get the team that tanked it all year to qualify for 2A, only to show up with eight former high-school stars come tourney time.
Maybe you get lucky and your first-round opponent is a team made up of 20 freshman who live at DT and decided to get a team together because they are in the same ward. This team is easily identified because they have between 30 and 100 screaming fans, mostly women from their ward, with signs and banners.
The all-freshman teams will not tire easily, but they are hampered by size and lack of experience. They will try to run you into the ground, but if you slow it up and play smart, the freshman team will choke on its inexperience.
My favorite opponent is the team I call the playground boys. This is the team made up of former playground greats who have adapted their physical game to the inside court. It’s easy to spot the playground team because of the non-stop barrage of trash talking. They make a basket, they tell you all about how you can’t possibly hope to guard them. They make a defensive stop and let you know how you need to come strong or don’t come at all.
The trash talkers are frustrating if you are losing, so the only way to beat them is to play their game. You have to out-talk them. Make a three-pointer and all the way back down the court you let the defender know what you think of his defense. A good defensive stop allows you to talk about keeping the ball out of “your house.”
Even away from the ball you can tell the man you’re guarding about what will happen if he attempts to shoot, or if you get the ball on offense.
Trust me, it works as long as you follow the Gary Payton or Michael Jordan rule: Don’t talk the talk unless you can walk the walk. You have to back up your words with good play or the playground boys will have the final word and plenty of it.
The most dangerous team to play in the tournament is the team that has been together for two or three years. In intramurals, this is a wealth of experience, and experience beats skill 90 percent of the time. Of course, not all of the experienced teams have the skills of the freshman team or the playground junkies, but they play as a cohesive unit instead of a group of individual stars.
The reason I love the tournament is simple: It puts everyone on the same level and lets them fight it out to see who will walk off with the T-shirt. Any team can win it all if it puts together a string of six or eight good games and doesn’t get the team that’s tanking in an early round.
By the final game, the competition is stiff and intense, especially in the upper divisions. Win and you keep playing. Lose and you can start planning your team for next year.
My team is in the 2A bracket. We are one of those experienced teams, but we can’t seem to put together two solid halves much less two or three solid games. However, the madness has affected us as well, and we believe we can win it all, just like all the other teams.
Toss up the ball, get your fans out and get ready to play some basketball. It’s tournament time again.
