As many of us left for the long weekend, either to the beaches of Sri Lanka or to the mountainsides, the few of us that remained decided to do something interesting during out long weekend. On January 16, 2022, Me, and three other friends signed up to participate in a 3v3 basketball tournament, officially hosted by FIBA. It was an extremely long and tough tournament, but unbelievably fun as well. We played 4 games in the group stage, with out first game being at 2:30 p.m., and our last group game being at around 7:30 p.m..
In our first game, which coincidentally was the first game of the entire tournament, we were comfortable victors, beating our opponents 7-3. Our mood was high and confident, but the fact that we needed to wait another 2 hours before our next game was quite frustrating. After the wait, we were pumped and ready to go, sure of ourselves and thinking that we could follow up with another win. At the time however, we didn’t know that the team we were about to play was one of the top teams in the tournament. Overconfidence may have played a part, as we were beaten 8-5.
At that point, our confidence fell pretty drastically, not only because we lost, but also because we needed to do something very hard to advance, we would need to win both of our next 2 games. So, after 1 hour of wait, we tried to hype ourselves up and walked into the court to play the game. I don’t know what happened that changed, but we were excellent that game, and demolished our opponents 8-2. Some great rebounding and excellent defense helped in the win. With confidence renewed, and our last game starting in less than 30 minutes, we were ready to play to advance. And advance we did, playing a relentlessly touch game that we one due to incredible defense all around. The final score was 6-4 and we couldn’t be happier. We had advanced to the quarter-finals of the tournament.
Our knockout game was the first one and it was challenging to say the least. We were up against absolute giants, with the tallest of us not being near the shortest of them. Despite this, we went full out and tried to do everything we can. The beginning of the game went our favor, and at one point we were even winning 3-0. However, as time continued, it became clear that size was an indisputably important factor. We were losing every rebound and couldn’t get the ball back. It didn’t help that the team we played had the best defense we saw in the tournament so far. The game finished 7-5 and we had no regrets. Obviously it would have been nicer to go further in the tournament, but, all considering, we played some great basketball and did well as a team, ending up all the way in the Quarter-Finals. It was extremely fun.
