On Thursday, February 15th, the Intramural Basketball Playoffs were played. It started out with nine teams in the league, but only four teams made it to the playoffs to try and win it all. The teams that made the playoffs were Shake and Bake, Boneyard Boyz, Upperdecky, and Make a Swish. All the teams were mostly composed of seniors except for Make a Swish who was an all junior team. Shake and Bake finished the season as the first seed and were set to play the fourth seeded Boneyard Boyz while the two seeded Make a Swish played Upperdecky the three seed. The games were played on the same night, with the first two games being played at 6:30 and 7:30, and the winner of those games played in the championship game at 8:30.

Shake and Bake vs Boneyard Boyz featured record-wise the best and worst team in the playoffs. However, Boneyard didn’t play like the worst team. Something that is different in the intramural league is instead of four quarters of 10 or 12 minutes, they play two halves of 20 minutes each. So in the first half, Boneyard came out strong, forcing turnovers left and right. Most of their points came off of fastbreak chances and easy layups after getting a steal before Shake and Bake can even advance the ball to the three point line. It also didn’t help that Shake and Bake could not get a bucket to fall, especially three pointers. At the end of the first half, the first seed Shake and Bake was losing 33-12 to Boneyard Boyz. Senior Max Pawl was doing all he could, scoring 8 out of the 12 points they scored in the half and Boneyard’s leading scorer was Senior Matthew Almaria with 11 points. Second Half was all Nate Foster for Boneyard Boyz. Nate had 10 in the first half and finished the game with 22 points, all of which in the second half were threes and he couldn’t miss at times. The second half had many bad shots from both teams as the game was pretty much over already; Boneyard Boyz came away with the win 58-31. Nate Foster led the game in scoring finishing with 22 points, along with Matthew having 14 points. Boneyard Boyz advanced to the championship and awaited the winner of Make a Swish and Upperdecky. 

The 7:30 game between Upperdecky and Make a Swish were two teams with opposite experiences in the league. Make a Swish is a new team that is ready to make their mark and Upperdecky was the runner-ups last year who lost to the Milkmen, who now are in college. A mix of good defense and neither team shooting the ball effectively made it a low scoring first half. Neither team could sink a shot but Make a Swish had the upper hand because of how much they were able to get to the line including a foul by Upperdecky’s Logan Edgeworth on a 3/4ths-court shot at the end of the half. Make a Swish was leading 20-9 at half thanks to Junior Cory Burton who had 8 points at the end of the half. Cory picked up where he left off after the second half started and ended up scoring 21 points by the end of the game leading them to the victory. Logan Edgeworth and Owen Skoraczewski tried their best with 16 and 14 points in the loss. This set up a matchup in the championship between the two seeded Make a Swish and four seeded Boneyard Boyz. 

Boneyard Boyz started out the championship game hot. They got out to a 19-6 lead until Make a Swish started to make it interesting. A mix of Boneyard Boyz not being able to hit their shots and Make a Swish getting to the line and feeding off their momentum, they managed to crawl back to end the half 21-17. Something that proved to be a hurdle for both teams and especially Make a Swish since they just played was rest because they had already played a game before. Therefore, the second half featured a lot of poor decisions and bad shots. Although Boneyard handled it way better, especially Senior Andrey Layco who kept shooting shots. He ended up with a whopping 28 points, propelling Boneyard to the victory and winning the whole thing. The game didn’t end close with the final score being 40-24.

This marked the end to a great intramural season. Be sure to sign up again next year as the league keeps getting more competitive and keeps making more improvements.