Photo Courtesy of ESU Student Recreation Center
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln hosted this year’s Region Five intramural basketball tournament from Feb. 28 to March 2, where the team from Emporia State went undefeated in five games against top schools across the Great Plains and Midwest. Their victory earned them free entry into the national tournament starting on April 11, and the team members believe that they have a good chance of achieving this historic win for ESU.
According to Assistant Director of the Student Recreation Center Craig Turner, no intramural team in Emporia State history has won this regional tournament, much less gone undefeated. Only two flag football teams have competed in a national tournament, and both teams paid to enter.
Adding to their underdog status, the ESU team had not even practiced formally until the weekend before the tournament. Jeremiah Stanton explained that, though many competing teams prepared for tournaments year-round, they were just friends who liked to play basketball.
“We had a group of guys that were just all guys that would come to the rec and play basketball and usually compete against each other a lot,” said Stanton. “But we knew if we went up there and we all came together for a weekend and locked in, really just putting our team together a week before, and for us to be able to just put our team together a week before and go up there and do what we did, it was pretty special.”
Though the team started informally, the players are heavy-hitters. Whereas a majority of ESU’s intramural basketball teams have had one or two former collegiate players, this year’s team had five. Key players included PJ Johnson, Gunnar Fort, tournament MVP David Duncan and winner of the dunk contest Tyreek Robinson, all of whom have competed in Hornet basketball. Stanton attributes their success on the court to the team’s wealth of experience with the sport.
“I think we got a group of guys that have a little higher basketball knowledge than a lot of the people that we played,” he said. “So I think that gave us a real advantage against our competition.”
The ESU team competed against teams from multiple D1 schools, some of whom had major success in the intramural tournaments. One competitor was the team from Air Force Academy, which had won the regional championship seven of the last 10 years and was runner-up in the national championship last year.
“I feel like every game, all four games leading up to the championship game, really prepared us for the championship game, because we had to play Air Force,” said Stanton. “So for us to be able to go in there and beat them the way we did, and not in a dominating fashion, but if you watch the game, that’s how it looked. Yeah, it was pretty cool.”
The team not only won the tournament against major players, but they won by a comfortable margin. Turner recalls his initial reaction to the team’s repeated wins.
“I had Jeremiah sending me updates after every game, and he’d be like, one and O, two and O,” he said. “And I just look at the scores. I was like, we’re just smacking people. These aren’t close games, you know. […] I immediately regretted not being there.”
Stanton also explains that, considering the team’s strong players and the way each of them showed up to the court for regionals, he believes they stand a chance of winning the national tournament.
“I think we know the group of guys that we got,” Stanton said. “We know if we’re all locked in and ready to go, we think we can beat anybody in the country. Especially seeing Air Force, if that’s who came in second last year in the national tournament, and we beat them by 13 or 15. We feel like we got a pretty good shot against anybody.”
SRC director Mike Wise speaks to the significance of this regional victory.
“It just highlights the quality of students that are at this university,” he said. “It also gives recognition to a university of this size, because you’re not going to find universities the size of Emporia that are going to be at a national tournament. We’ve been competitive at regional level, but to walk through that tournament and practically have no competition, and then to be able to step onto the big stage and go against, as far as recreation goes, the elite people and the university, it’s a big deal.”