Four on Five

A few weeks ago, a good friend of mine (Larry Bollschweiler) invited me to join his intramural basketball team. I never say no to basketball, and the fact that the games are played in Provo did not deter me from signing up. I was a late addition to the team at the end of the season, and there was only one game left before the playoffs. We won that game easily, and I was looking forward to playing more with those guys.

The next game was the first playoff game. We only had four guys show up. The other team had nine players, and their following could have filled up the bleachers in just about any gym. Needless to say, we were a little intimidated. The game started and we could not miss a shot. The other team had a few good players, but enough of them didn’t seem that organized, so we felt like we could compete. We were leading by twelve at halftime. We felt good so far, but I was worried about running out of steam in the second half. We actually outscored them by three in the second half and won by fifteen. We were stoked. Winning a competitive game, while short handed is quite an accomplishment.

We were glad to have lived to see another day. I received a phone call from Larry saying that our next game would be on Friday night. Then he said that we would only have four guys there at the beginning of the game, but that a fifth would show up around halftime. When I made it to the gym, only Rick (far right) and Kevin (Far left) were there. We were warming up, wondering who our fourth and fifth guys would be. They were calling everyone together, to get the game started and our fourth guy wasn’t there. We thought that we were going to have to forfeit the game. Then Ben (Second to the left) walked through the door. I could have kissed his feet. When we told the people in charge that we had four, they said, “Great, now you just need a score keeper. If you don’t have one in one minute, you forfeit”. Again, our hopes sank. We were about to lose the game because no one liked us enough to come to our game. Then, Kevin’s wife (she took the picture.) walked through the doors. It’s a good thing Kevin showed up or we would have been done before the game even started.

The team we were playing this time was better than the week before. Rick started the game by pounding the ball inside. He was a beast. No one could stop him and he had his first dunk within the first two minutes. Kevin and Ben were flying all over the place on defense. They were getting steals and easy baskets. Rick and I would have quick outlet passes to either one of them for fast breaks. We decided to push really hard in the first half, and slow it down a little, when the fifth guys showed up. Luckily, the other team’s jumpers weren’t falling, because it is impossible to always be defending five guys when you only have four. The first half ended and we were up by ten.

We were looking for the fifth guy. Where was he? Halftime ended, and he still wasn’t there. We went right back at it. We were grabbing all of the rebounds, getting inside shots, getting to the free throw line. We were doing everything right. We could hear the other team saying, “Come on guys, there are only four of them”. We pulled away late in the game and ended up winning by twenty points.

It probably seems a little corny that I would be writing about this on my blog. Unless you have experienced something like this, it might be hard to understand how cool this was for all of us. It is almost to the point where we don’t want a fifth guy to show up for our next game. I am a competitive guy, and I love being the underdog at times. Hopefully, we can keep it going and I can write later about winning it all. It has always been my dream to win an intramural basketball tournament at BYU. Who doesn’t dream of such grandeur?