So I was scrolling through twitter earlier (what else does anyone do while on the toilet?) and I noticed a post from the Ohio State Basketball Managers account about their game against Creighton's managers. Based on the final score, it appears it wasn't much a game at all, with the good guys taking the game 65-29 if I remember correctly.
Now I know that the OSU managers are talented group of former high school players regardless (i've heard they are the undisputed kings of the intramural league in Columbus) but I had to laugh when I saw Andrew Dakich in the team photo taken after the contest. You have to wonder what he's thinking to himself during games, after playing against some of the steepest competition in the B1G to playing against kids who are... well you get the point.
It also reminded me of the time that I got kicked out of my own university's intramural league for "illegal players". A story that I thought my fellow 11Wers would find amusing.
So i'll take you back to 2015, I was completing my master's program at Kent State and serving as a Graduate Intern for the women's basketball program. I had played intramural basketball all throughout undergrad but never was a part of a team that had enough talent to win the whole tournament at the end of the season. So I thought, it being my last year at Kent State and all, that I would assemble an "All-Star" team and go out as a champion.
One of my good friends and classmate was the GA for the men's basketball team and had a few ideas on how to go about accomplishing this. What we ended up with was a team made up of the following:
- Myself, my friend, and two other classmates
- An assistant coach for the women's basketball team
- The managers for the men's basketball team
- A former 3-start recruit (6'5", 210 lb SF)
- A redshirt freshman on the men's team (6'2" 190 lb G with a 42" vertical)
- A former MAC player of the year (6'7" 275 C)
The season didn't exactly start out the way we envisioned it. Our first game we were actually down 6 with about 3 minutes left in the second half. During a timeout, the three players walked into the huddle, look at all of us dead in the eye and said "Okay...we'll play for real now"... and proceeded to end the game on a 24-2 run.
The rest of the regular season ended with wins by a margin of 35, 60, and 24 and we ended up being the 5th overall seed because our first game had cost in the tiebreaker. During this stretch I would like to be known that I contributed... by standing in the corner and averaging 11 points a game shooting nothing but 3s (on 44% shooting) and playing little to no defense because by the time I got turned around to head back down the court, my teammates had already stolen the ball.
Anyways, every other team had put themselves on the opposite side of the bracket from us knowing damn well the ass reaming that was coming. Well... everyone but the 13th seeded team, who looked at us during the selection meeting and told us they were going to upset us.
Fast forward and we obliterated them by 40 and the game was called with 5 minutes left in the second half. So we're getting ready for our second game two days later and we get called into the head of Intramural's office. She sits us down, places a folder on her desk, and reveals to us screenshots of our entire teams social media accounts. Turns out we had 12 different teams (the final being the team we dick punched in the first round) file a complaint about us saying that we had "illegal players" and we were "cheating".
She actually was very nice about the whole incident, even telling us "I was honestly going to let you destroy everyone and put a asterisk on the season at the end" which I thought was absolutely hilarious.
In the end, we had to forfeit our season and watch the team we destroyed in the first round get blasted again in the following game but it's still one hell of a story and I thought I would share!
Please feel free to share any and all of your intramural stories!
