Intramural basketball weekly notebook (Feb. 11-17)

Last year, The Daily Barometer ranked the top 10 intramural men’s basketball teams heading into the playoffs.

This year, we’re taking it a step further.

Over the course of the four-week regular season, we’ll scout each men’s “A” team at least twice — unless you’re not any good, then we won’t waste our time.

Every Tuesday, we’ll run a notebook with observations from the previous week’s men’s “A” games. The day before the playoffs begin, we’ll release our men’s “A” top-10. We will also release a women’s “A” top-five, but we won’t include the women’s teams in our weekly notebooks since there are only 18 women’s teams in comparison to 78 men’s teams.

The notebooks will touch on a variety of topics — we have no set criteria for what we will, or won’t, write about.

If you don’t like something we wrote, or if you think we significantly undersold or oversold a certain team, feel free to shoot us an email (sports@dailybarometer.com) or hit us up on Twitter (@gradygarrett, @AndrewKilstrom).

Notes on games from Feb. 11-17 — last night’s games will be included in next week’s notebook:

• The most important game last week took place between Fantasy Factory and Lambda Chi Alpha A Team. Both teams featured at least one player who played in last year’s All-U championship game, and both teams entered last week undefeated — comfortably undefeated — so we made sure to watch this one closely. Here are some notes from the game, of which Fantasy Factory won 45-35:

• Fantasy Factory’s point guard was rocking a sick McDonald’s All-American Chauncey Billups jersey. Not sure where he got it, but we’re jealous.

• The game was played intensely, possibly more so than a lot of OSU men’s basketball games this year (yes, that’s a shot at their underperformance). More than that, they played the right way. Tempers flared at times, but considering how hard everyone was playing, the sportsmanship was pretty good.

• Lambda Chi’s point guard looks like a really good player, but that 3-point celebration was questionable. It was probably cool in your head, but don’t do it again.

• Things climaxed with six minutes left when the score was 28-28. Fantasy Factory’s bigs took over and subsequently pulled away.

• After making fun of Babbitt Empire (Monday at 10 p.m. timeslot) last week, it seems as though our harsh words acted as inspiration. Tied with only seconds remaining, Alex Reininga hit a game-winning 3-pointer in what might have been the best finish to a game this year. When asked what the difference was between weeks past and Monday night, An Nguyen replied with an unsurprising answer for such a dumb team name: “Babbitt was with us tonight.”

• We also witnessed another game-winning 3-pointer — this one was a bit more important, because it helped an undefeated team stay undefeated. Tied with the winless Notown Prodigies, Benjamin Loveday hit a 3-pointer from the corner with 1.2 seconds remaining to give his team a 28-25 win. Loveday’s team’s name? Lillard Time. Yes, two teams named after Blazers won on last-second 3-pointers last week. What’s that mean? We have no idea.

• In Stark Shot Selectors’ 46-45 win over White Mamba, a former Barometer sports editor (not either of us) made two free throws with 2.3 seconds left, his team down one and a playoff spot on the line. Just because we write about sports doesn’t automatically mean we’re not any good at playing them ourselves.

• There was also a pretty intense, close game on Sunday that deserves mention. Though Moharebeens and Curry County +1 are both pretty good, playoff-bound teams, they each managed the last minute of regulation horribly and ended up going into overtime after a Curry County +1 player was fouled on a drive to the hoop with one second remaining and his team down one. (Note to everyone: Attack the basket when the game is on the line. We’ve seen refs call a foul in said situation more often than not.) The Curry County +1 player made one of two and his team wound up winning in overtime.

• We’ve mentioned several times that the 10 p.m. time slot on Wednesday is when Polyester, the primary “football team,” plays. It’s worth pointing out that while Polyester (1-2) has underachieved, the best team from this time slot — the MinoTaurs — actually has a football player of its own (6-foot-7 tight end Connor Hamlett), as well as ex-football players Jack Lomax and Will Storey. They beat Polyester two weeks ago and then took down undefeated Sabonis’ Massage Team last week, so they’ve definitely emerged as the best of the teams featuring current/former OSU athletes.

• Our weekly shout-out to the teams that lost by 30-plus last week: The Chicago Pulls, Sigma Chi 2 and SAE II. Oh, we almost forgot Lambda Chi Alpha B. This is their third week in a row on this list, but this past week they dropped to a whole new level, losing by 64 points (82-18). SIXTY FREAKING FOUR.