Insider’s look at intramurals

It was 2 a.m. and Dane and I were bleary-eyed and punchy. The fourth straight SportsCenter replay was about to begin and an outfit of apple cores oxidized in the garbage bin - the signs of a long and desperate night. But our minds remained sharp, meticulous in every sense.
"We need to get the ball into the low post more," Dane said. "We don't create enough easy buckets."
These late night strategy sessions had become commonplace and necessary in our dorm room. The previous season our intramural basketball team had lost all five games and Dane and I were frantically determined to avoid this pathetic and humiliating fate.
"Maybe we should throw in the press a little earlier too, try to jump out to a strong start," he added.
I nodded sternly.
More USD students play intramural sports than attend the homecoming football game or the average non-conference basketball game. Intramural basketball is the chance for each crew, each posse at USD to prove their worth. It's very similar to the battles between the five-points street gangs of 19th century New York. Each crew, each team has their own style, their own swag, induces their own degree of bitter annoyance. There are zone teams and loquacious teams and three point shooting teams and cordial teams and uniformed teams and teams with a center who sweats too much and looks like John Beluschi. Of course the first step toward intramural basketball success is developing a creative team name. Funny but not contrived. Clever but clear. The name serves as the team's introduction to the world, an essential first impression with which the team will instantly gain or lose the respect of their opponent.
Our team name was "Mho Money Mou Problems." It is never a good sign when you have to explain your intramural basketball team name with, "it's an engineering joke." Clearly we were on the wrong side of the fence to begin with.
"So do you think this team will be any good?" Dane asked.
"Um, they're beatable. Solid, but beatable," I responded.
The Slumpbusters were our opponents this week. Led by The Vista sports editor, Ryan Sidhoo and fellow Vista staff writer Joey Shoen, the team drew from us a sense of calm familiarity. In intramural basketball calm familiarity is a devil with a painted face.
Like driving and Madden, in intramural basketball people are rarely as good as they think. Though perhaps that perspective is reserved for those at the bottom of the standings, for those who actually are not as good as they initially believed. Such was the case with our 0-5 team the year before. Trapped in Plato's cave, we had stared at the shrunken shadows of the intramural basketball universe and assumed we were the biggest. But surely this year we were as good as we thought. We had escaped the cave, seen the giants and learned their flaws. Close faster on shooters, push the tempo against bigger teams, pressure weak ball handlers, pass and screen away. We had tenets.
"This is a very winnable game, Samaha," Dane proclaimed. "No way we're losing this one."
"Yeah man, we're too solid," I replied.
Then they beat us by 36. We didn't get the ball to the low post, we didn't press and we were painfully far from solid. On an embarrassment scale from one to Michael Steele fiasco this was at least a seven
We had been eviscerated, viciously torn apart by a pack of wild hyenas, who laughed with every crunch of bone and tear of flesh. Losses like this can drive a man into a maelstrom of loathing and gloom.
Dane and I limped back to our dorm in silence, trudging through a thick fog of disillusionment.
"We missed way too many open shots, and too many turnovers," one of us said, "Tough to lose such a winnable game."