The top four intramural squads are beginning to focus in as they head into the single-elimination playoff.

The regular season wrapped up in an interesting way. The 1 and 3 seed faced off in an important game that decided how challenging their road to the championship will be.

“To end the regular season, we beat the orange team to secure an undefeated season and the 1 seed for the playoffs. I think we will be having a rematch against the green team in the first round since they lost to purple in the last game,” senior Sam Grimes said.

Different teams have different playstyles. Some get in high scoring shootouts, and others get it done on defense in low scoring battles.

“In our last game, we really started scoring a lot of points. White team is known to not play very good defense, and we took advantage of that. I think we ended up having almost 40 points, which has to be some sort of record,” senior Amare Middleton said. “If we can score like that in the playoffs, I do not think anyone can beat us.”

Being the lower seeded team, it becomes necessary to strategize if it is even worth winning and what situation a win or a loss will lead to.

“I was talking to some of my teammates before the game, and we were deciding which team would be easier to face in the playoffs. If we won the last game of the year, we would play the second seeded pink team, and if we lost, we would be playing the one seed red team. We ultimately decided that we should just get the win and play the pink team,” senior Micah Vessley said.

The captain of the orange team, senior Tanner Crouch, likes his team’s odds against anyone in the league.

  “We know that we match up well against anyone in the league with our size. We have the two tallest players on our team, and when they defend the paint well and make their layups, we win our games big and dominate the paint. For the playoffs, we need to make sure to use our size to our advantage and take good high percentage shots,” Crouch said.

The black team faced some early adversity, but since their close losses in the first two weeks, they have not lost since.

“I feel like our side of the league is full of much tougher competition. We started off 0-2 after two close losses before winning a close one to the orange team and having two dominating wins in our out of conference games. If our path is right, I think we can go all the way,” senior Cooper Smith said.

The playoffs ended exactly as one might expect, but it was nowhere near an easy path for the one seeded red team.

“In the first round we played the bottom seeded purple team. They only had four players but it still was not a walk in the park. After that, we played the black team. We had a late five basket lead, but they rallied back and we barely held on to our lead and moved on to the championship,” Grimes said.

The orange team faced a very similar defeat to the black team.

“We definitely had plenty of chances to win the game and move on to the championship. All the teams were super even though and anyone could have made it to the championship. Both losers in the semi-final round only lost by one, so you can not even be mad,” Crouch said.

The championship game was the closest game of the entire season, and the typical leader of the team, junior Henry Barrett, was dwarfed by this players championship performance.

“Henry’s bag is endless, it feels like he contributes in a different way every game, whether that be attacking the basket or making it rain from behind the arc. The pink team was focusing their defense on Henry and I got a lot of opportunities to score. Henry was definitely the MVP of the entire season, but I definitely put my best game forward in the championship,” junior Isaac Apgar said.