At Jesuit few things are more popular and successful than intramural sports. Almost every Jesuit student competes in
one at some point in his career, and no single sport is bigger than basketball. Every year, the Jesuit Basketball Association gathers the school’s best basketball players who don’t play school basketball and play a full season capped off by playoffs. The JBA is as serious as it gets, as the winning team receives Mavs tickets, championship rings, and eternal glory.
This year’s finals, held on Tuesday, April 17, matched up the preseason favorites, Blake Griffin and Co., against the Cinderella story team, the Pirates. The magical run continued for the Pirates as they managed to win Game 1 in the best-of-5 series 15-12, as owner Chris Wallace ’12 willed the team to victory. The Pirates run ended there however, as Blake Griffin won the next three games with scores of 15-9, 15-4, and 15-7, led by the shooting of Matt White ’12 and Mitchell Maggard ’12.
Blake Griffin’s owner, Nick Ackels ’12 compared his team’s playoff run to “Dirk Nowitski winning the NBA finals last year; it was probably the greatest thing of all time.” Key player Scott Weiss ’12 described the team as “tenacious.” He continued to say that “from the beginning, the deck was stacked against us as we were in the conference with probably the three best teams in the league, but little did anyone know that Blake Griffin would ultimately rise!” Ackels summarized the emotions of the season: “We really underachieved the whole year until the playoffs, so it was just satisfying at the end.”
JBA Commissioner and math teacher Ken Howell said, “It was a successful season. It was pretty even and most of the 
teams did pretty well. I was happy with both those teams in the finals because both these teams worked pretty hard to try and build good teams to play in the finals and they were both good solid teams throughout the year. Also, I liked that both teams upset the first seed to get into the finals, so they both worked hard to get here.”
However assistant Commissioner and social studies teacher Tim Murphy, seemed a little bitter about his team, Tight, losing to Blake Griffin in the conference finals. “No, I’m not really happy for Blake Griffin winning,” Murphy said in an interview. “We lost in the semi-finals. I had my eye on the trophy and we came up short. I am happy for some players on the team though.”
