Captain Zak Khan of team “Sunny D” battled for a loose ball in the first of two overtimes, butting heads with “And Then Some” captain Tevin Sutton-Stephenson. The result: Zak got an extremely swollen right eye, which will definitely lead to some bruising.
Khan played on until the end the second and deciding overtime period, where Sutton-Stephenson’s squad emerged victorious. Khan was rushed to the hospital.
“Basketball never dies. Even on this level, it means everything. Zak is a warrior,” Sutton-Stephenson said after the game. “We worked hard; that’s the hardest I’ve ever worked. That’s the first time we had a team revolve around me. I’m not used to being the guy on a team, but we got the championship—my first.”
It took four quarters, plus two bonus ones, for And Then Some to edge Sunny D out by a score of 59–58 to claim the men’s Campus Rec Intramural basketball finals. Controversy surrounded the finish.
And Then What’s squad featured an eight-man roster with fresh legs, compared to Sunny D’s five-man squad (only a starting lineup) and no bench. Sunny D took a literal and figurative blow with Khan’s injury.
And Then What acknowledged the discrepancy. The game was sealed by the defensive rebound of Mehmet Akcagliyan. Following the contest, he’s ready to play even more basketball to silence any critics; he said, “It was a really fun game between two hard-working teams. We were just a better team today, and at the end the day, we won. If they want to go again, we can do that. We’ll still win.”
He continued, “It would be the same result, because those are their best; they had their main guys. Fatigue set in, but I played the whole game. They need to come prepared to play the whole game—and they did. We had a great game, and we came away with the win.”
Asked whether he was willing to have a rematch, Sutton-Stephenson said, “Of course—but next semester.”
