It’s almost two weeks since we won our college championship here at LIT.
Ever since I first stepped foot into limerick all I heard from the rest of the basketball players was how much it means to them to win the college championship. Even from my own coordinator and his boss, winning the college championship was a goal to be accomplished.
On Wednesday March 13th that goal was accomplished. My college team is made up of 15 total guys including me (I got a really big team *drake voice*) and every single one of those lads show up to every training session every Monday. Their passion and enthusiasm for the game of basketball is something I have never seen. Their willingness to let Matt and I play our game judgment free and with confidence is something I appreciated all season.
Being on the national league due to Basketball Ireland rules two non Europeans can not be on the court at the same time. But, with the college league that rule is non existent. Having limited amount of minutes was frustrating at first, but once the college league came around I was happy as ever to display my true talent and help the team achieve our goal.
We ended up finishing the season undefeated in the league with two more games to go to be considered CHAMPIONS! Due to our high seeding we were able to clinch a semi-final game at home vs Maynooth College, another top team in the college league just from the northern conference. Back home I’m used to large crowds at games especially at playoff games so I asked a few of my teammates if people would come to our game and some of their responses were like, “Doubt it! No Shot! The school doesn’t even know we’re in the playoffs.” I could tell the team never truly got support from the LIT community given how unaware the team is and especially with basketball not being a huge sport here in Ireland. I decided to invite everyone to my game. From my class, to locals, to even everyone on my social media. From there my teammates followed and promoted the game on their social media! On the day of the game we were all nervous, but we decided to get to the gym as early as we can to practice and just be around each other. We started to slowly notice the gym get packed! In LIT we don’t have bleachers and barely any room for people to sit/stand, but due to us asking people to come to the game we had a full on crowd to cheer us on! In that crowd I saw kids I coached before, parents I met in the community, classmates and even friends of friends. It was so nice to see everyone that we knew come together to support the lads in our pursuit of a championship.
We ended up winning the game with a score of 97 – 79. Truly, I credit that game to the energy in that gym. With every score, pass, assist or defensive stop our bench and crowd roared in celebration. That energy feeded into the five players on the floor at that time and the end result was a perfect representation of that.
After the game we came together and knew we just accomplished something special, but the goal was still not achieved. We had one last step, one last “inch” to achieve to be called champions.
With that win we were going to go head to head with IT Sligo. All year we heard of this team doing very well in the northern conference and Matt and I knew why. They had two great Victory Scholars in Zack and Connor. Both of them played at high level schools back in the states and even helped their national league team make the playoffs this year. We knew those two were good but had no idea about the rest of their squad.
As a leader I knew my team was deep in numbers, energy, and enthusiasm for each other. Regardless of how many guys play I knew I had 15 guys supporting each other till the final buzzer regardless of anything! I was hyped up for this championship game because my last appearance in a championship game was in Highschool. In college I only made it to the semi-finals twice with disappointing losses in both appearances.
Due to all the college championship games being scheduled in a 3 day span, we were given an 11am start time in Dublin. Limerick is about 2 hours away, so in order to have enough time to eat, get changed, and warmup we had to leave at 6:30am. I hateeeeeee mornings, I literally consider myself a night owl. But for this day I could suck it up (pause) and be ready to go to war with my brothers. We boarded the bus together and I can see in everyone’s eyes, they were pumped! I don’t think anyone went to sleep on the ride up, either they were playing their favorite music or watching film/prepping for Sligo. I decided to watch film with my teammates Dylan and Kyle.
Dylan is a young lad, 19 years old and understands basketball well for his age. He understands his role as a point guard and is a phenomenal defensive player. Oftentimes throughout the season he was tasked with guarding the best player and did very well. The day of the championship game was no different – he was tasked with guarding Sligo’s best player Zack. What he does for our team is not pretty, but I tell him all the time his contributions aren’t noticed on the scoresheet, but they are noticed within the 16 guys on this bus and we all appreciate it.
Kyle is an older guy about 24/25 and from Canada. He’s studying Strength and Conditioning at LIT and is currently overcoming an ACL tear. The work I seen this guy put in throughout the year and the constant progression he made with each training session was inspirational to say the least. To see him have a big part in winning this championship was incredibly fulfilling given his backstory.
As we got off the bus to head to the arena everyone had their music on… getting in the zone. We started warming up with the constant focus of just treating this game as any other game. I can see everyone was ready to go!
The game began and Sligo was off to the races! Zack was pulling some unreal three pointers while Conor was dominating in the post. We had NO ANSWER for those two, but my boy Matt managed the deficit to a reasonable amount. We ended the first quarter only down 3 points with a score of 27-24.
We were in the timeout pretty calm and understood what type of competitor Sligo truly was. They weren’t like the other teams, they were just like us… in regards to skill set and personnel. As the second quarter began that 3 point deficit grew…and grew… and GREW! By the time halftime rolled around we were down TWENTY ONE points 🤦🏽♂️.
All 16 of us got to the huddle and we just stared at each other for what felt like an hour. We had no words of encouragement, game-plan… NOTHING. We were never in this position before, but we knew we came too far to just give up now.
Now credit to my guy Mike… in Ireland for some reason you don’t call your coaches “coach” you just call them by their first name and in my situation my coaches name is Mike. Mike came to the huddle with no board or sheet of paper but with a simple message that will stay with me and those 15 other guys forever. I’m paraphrasing now, but he said something along the lines of “…lads it’s time to fight! It’s time to fight inch by inch….INCH BY INCH! COME ON LIT!”
I swear to you we came out that huddle so pumped up and ready to go I felt like I was in a slow-mo scene of a movie. Despite being down 21 we had 20 more minutes to try to figure this out… game play resumed and BANG Sligo hits a three… down 24 now 😅. We come down miss a shot, they get the rebound and drive to the basket to force a foul. The guy ends up making one out of two. We are now down TWENTY-FIVE POINTS with a score of 61 – 36 in the Championship Game of the college league.. embarrassed is the word to describe those minutes on the court, but Mike pulled us together once again and reinforced the message of just going “inch by inch” in our pursuit of winning this game. We came back out onto the floor with a fresh perspective of not trying to get all the points back all at once, but just simply “inch by inch”.
A few defensive stops here, a few three pointers here, a couple free throws here and slowly but surely we were coming back, “inch by inch”. At one point Sligo’s best Irish player who was giving us big problems on the court with his play making ability fouled out. This was HUGEEE!!!! With that player fouling out, we were well on our way to regaining this lead. By the time the fourth quarter began we were only down 12 points with a score of 74 – 62. Momentum was on our side, we believed in ourselves and most importantly we believed in each other!
We came back onto the floor ready for war!
Matt turned up (NY slang for did really well) in the first two minutes nicknaming him The “Scamuffo Show” and cut the lead to 8! But Zack “turned up” too with 5 points of his own.
I was in foul trouble (per usual) and was watching all this unfold. I wanted to help at the moment, but I just couldn’t risk getting another foul and being out of the game. But my boy Peter did his thing! Peter is a young lad, just turned 19 and only been playing basketball for a few years now. He knows how to use his body and understands his role on the team very well. He kind of does the things no one else really wants too. Diving on the floor, taking charges, fighting for rebounds all that fun stuff. Anyway, he just come off an ankle injury and this was his first game back. He was in my position since I was on the bench and had the most impressive 2 minute span I’ve seen in a basketball match during my time in Ireland. Peter fought for a rebound and ended up tipping the ball to Matt to score an easy two points. Then he ran all the way back on defense took a charge on Conor causing him to sit the bench for a few minutes. Then on offense he made a floater to cut the lead even more! Then on defense, Peter got switched on to Zack (Sligo’s best player) and ended up forcing him to turnover the ball!! Mike subbed me back in for Peter as it was obvious he just gave all his effort for the team. I gave him a hug and said, “thank you so much, we’re gonna get this!”
As game resumed time was running out and we were down 12. We had to make baskets and get stops on defense…QUICK!
Matt and I ran a pick a roll all game with either him or I making a layup. We decided to keep doing this, but with Conor out and a smaller defender on me I decided to pop for a three point shot instead of roll for a layup. When I popped after the screen, both defenders went to Matt leaving me wide open at the top of the key. Matt passed me the ball and I hit it! Down 9 now, we get back on defense and get another stop! We come back on offense and run the exact same pick and roll play, and again both defenders went with Matt leaving me wide open… BANG! I hit another one, I was hypeeeeeeee!!! Down 6 now! We get back on defense and get ANOTHER stop! It was so lit, our bench and the crowd was roaring for us to get another basket. Again, Matt and I run the pick the roll, but instead of both defenders playing Matt one stood with each of us. Matt drove and kicked the ball to the far corner and hit our teammate Mark, where he sinked another three pointer! Down 3 now! We get on defense with our bench supporting us,
“defense 👏🏽👏🏽, defense 👏🏽👏🏽” our teammate Krystian got a steal passed it to me and I drove drawing the defender and I passed to Matt and Matt made the layup with the foul! The gym went crazy!!!! We were down 1 point 81 – 80 with 5 minutes to go! Sligo called a timeout! We came back to the huddle with a roar of a reception from our teammates!
Mike looked at us and told us, “lads it’s time to go for the last inch”! And we allllll knew what that meant, in 5 minutes we were going to be CHAMPIONS! Play resumed and Matt hit the free throw to tie the game up 81 – 81.
It wasn’t until the three minute mark where Matt and Zack were going back and forth scoring points for their teams. The last minute of the game was intense, Zack pulled up from the free throw line to tie the game at 88. With time winding down, I set a screen for Matt and he sank the three pointer to go up 91-88. Sligo had one more possession to potentially tie. We just came back from being down 25 points, their was no way we were going to allow them to make this game any longer. We played good defense and their shot was off at the buzzer!
WE DID IT! We were CHAMPIONS! Inch by Inch we fought and over time we achieved our goal!
This championship game was one I will never forget…I’m actually hype because the game was streamed on Facebook and some of my friends and family was able to watch at home.
The togetherness, belief, and willingness to continue to fight inch by inch by each of us on that team is something players wish they could be apart of. I was lucky enough to BE apart of it. Thank you Mike for believing in me and never giving up on us, this win is just as much credit to you as it is to us!
To my LIT team…my brothers…my family… like I said at lunch later that day that trophy is something tangible. That will always be a representation of our year together! No one can ever take that away from us!
Three cheers for LIT !!!!
