JMU Hosts East Coast Basketball League Classic
University Recreation
On November 9 and 10, JMU Men's Club Basketball hosted the second annual East Coast Basketball League Classic.
This tournament, previously known as the Duke Dog Classic, typically consisted of 16-18 teams. In the past two years, Men's Club Basketball has successfully transformed the event into an even more well known, competitive fall season tournament with 30 teams from all over the East Coast teams in attendance.
Before this tournament, JMU's team as a whole had a strong winning record, only suffering 1 loss to Virginia Tech. The Dukes have already won two tournaments this season, one at Virginia Tech and one at UVA.
JMU's team, comprised of 12-18 members, split into two squads - JMU Purple and JMU Gold. Despite the fact the the team has been burdened by several injuries to players, the Dukes were able to put on a solid show. In this year's ECBL Classic, both Purple and Gold teams made it to the championship bracket on Sunday, but eventually bowed out in the second round. Penn State and Villanova made it to the finals, where Penn State edged out a victory by a narrow 2-point margin.
Such a large tournament is quite a task for any one team to organize. There were a few hiccups along the way, but overall the club was happy with the weekend's events. Nick Ferguson, the Vice President of the Club, spoke about how he and President Chris Sheehy worked together to keep the event running smoothly.
"Organizing the tournament was a lot of work but Chris and I tag-teamed it and handled everything appropriately. However, we did have a few obstacles to overcome. A hoop on Godwin court 4 would not lower so we had to send teams to Memorial to play out the games there. Shout out to the UREC staff for helping to make this event a success."
Ferguson also explained that this year the team has set the goal of winning Nationals. JMU hopes to win a regional tournament in order to earn a free birth to Nationals, an obstacle that seems to be well within their ability to surmount. The team has the good fortune of returning many of its core players from last year, so the Dukes feel up to the task.
