The Sport Report: Pick This

March 5, 2014

by Tyler Burroughs, Intramural Sports Graduate Assistant

That’s all folks!  After last night’s wonderful All-Star festivities, the Intramural Basketball regular season has come to a close.  Despite a few wrenches thrown into the works by the weather (snow days in GEORGIA??!!), we completed a very entertaining season.  For those of you that did not qualify for the playoffs…, thank you!  I hope you had an enjoyable regular season of Basketball.  For those of you still in the fight, let’s talk some more…

Playoff Basketball is a beautiful thing.  It brings out the most competitive spirits in even the easiest going individuals.  It’s amazing what fervent emotion can come out of college students when they are competing for a t-shirt.  Lucky for me, I can help boost these already heightened emotions before games even start by analyzing our playoff brackets and making picks that are sure to get those who care buzzing.

Women’s Championship

After a down-to-the-wire upset victory over Pippen Ain’t Easy in the final regular season game, BangBang stole the overall #1 seed going into the tournament.  This will turn out to be the biggest blessing this team could ask for.  The 1 seed not only enjoys a first-round bye, but they avoid facing #3 Team HK, who will assuredly advance past #6 Kappa Delta in the first round.  I believe they will once again give #2 Pippen Ain’t Easy all they can handle (much like they did in the regular season) but will close it out this time, beating Pippen and advancing to face BangBang in the championship.  BangBang will cruise to the championship and use their moxy learned from the UGA regional to earn the Women’s championship.

CoRec Championship

The CoRec division of basketball was extremely top-heavy this year.  In my opinion, there are 5 teams with some sort of a chance, and then there are the rest.  #1 Lebron’s Fighting Irish won’t meet any resistance until they face #5 $QU@D in the semi-final (who will get there by upsetting #4 Team HK). #3 maeT will also cruise to the final, leaving #2 Grovetown and Ashley to start planning for next season.  In the end, maeT takes it all.

Men’s Recreational Championship

Honestly, this tournament might be the hardest to pick.  With 41 teams, its the largest of the tournaments and let’s be honest, no one knows which rec teams are actually good.  I’ll just cut to the chase and say that #1 BallSoHard will beat #6 Decent at Best in the championship.

Fraternity Championship

Soapbox moment: I would like to personally thank Macen Howells for being the only Fraternity man invited to the All-Star game to actually participate.  As a champion of Greek Life, it saddens me that all but one of the men who qualified were not willing to represent their chapters in an exhibition in front of their Intramural peers.  That being said, #3 Sigma Alpha Epsilon will squeak their way into the final, where they will complete the dream by upsetting #1 Delta Tau Delta.

Men’s Competitive Championship

Instead of making a pick for this bracket, I’ll simply say this:  I challenge a team – ANY TEAM – to beat #1 FGxTG.  They won the Fall Classic.  They won the Pre-season tournament.  They went to the UGA regional and blasted quality teams from all over the state (unfortunately losing to a club team later in the tournament).  I don’t have any personal vendettas against them, but it might be nice to share the love right? Anyone? No?  I didn’t think so…

If you agree or disagree with the picks, or if you just want to put your opponents on upset alert, take it to Twitter and tag @GSUIntramurals!  I look forward to seeing the playoffs play out and I hope you all enjoy the rest of the season!